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Reagan- the Man,
the President

Reagan the Man,
the President

Hedrick Smith
Adam Clymer
Leonard Silk
Robert Lindsey
Richard Burt

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Contents

Introduciion; A Historic Opportunity
Hedrick Smith

I A Star Is Born
Adam Chtner

]] Creating the Role
Robert Liridser

III California Rehearsal
Robert Lindsey

IV On the Supply Side
Leonard Sdk

V Free Trader
Leonard Silk

Arms and the Man

Richard Burl

VII

Reagan's World

Hedrick Smith

VIII

The Final Campaign

Adam Clymer

127

Mr. Reagan Goes to Washington

Hedrick Smith

147

Chronology

185

Introduction:

A Historic Opportunity

Hedrick Smith

We have arrived at a fascinating and quite remarkable moment in
American political history. A sixty-nine-year-old man who has
spent most of his working life in another profession has captured
the Presidency and won the opportunity to lead a political revolu*
tiOB. Or more precisely, a conservative political Reformation that
seeks to redirect the role of government in American life and per-
haps to reshape the national political landscape for the rest of the
century.

For Ronald Wilson Reagan is a crusader, the first missionary
conservative to win the White House since Franklin D. Roosevelt
defeated Herbert Hoover in 1932 and launched a literal revolution
of governmental activism and Democratic Party dominance that
has lasted nearly fifty years. Now comes another reformer preach-
ing the gospel that government is not the solution but part of the
problem, promising an era of national renewal based on less gov-
ernment, and projecting that same jaunty, smiling self-confidence
as Rooseveir £n the teeth of narional cjmicKm and despair.

The challenge is monumental. Ronald Reagan takes office at

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

a time when the wellsprings of public confidence have nearly run
dr\' and the yearning for America to regain control of its destiny is
palpable across the lan^. A decade ago, the seemingly endless
agony of Vietnam sapped the nation’s strength and morale and
left the crippling sensation that something had gone profoundly
wrong. The seizure of American hostages in Iran sharpened the
pain of national humiliation. The fifty-two hostages, pawns in the
bv'zantinc internal feuding in Iran, became the concrete metaphor
for America’s abiding sense of impotence. It was shattering to the
national ego when the rescue attempt last .August aborted because
vaunted American technology broke down in the Iranian desert.

•At home, the nation’s economic afflictions have seemed be-
yond the wit of thinkers to diagnose properly or the power of poli-
c}‘-makcrs to cure. Three Presidents have ventured forth to do bat-
tle with the twin-headed monster of inflation and unemployment
and have ultimately been devoured by that dragon. America’s
aging industry loses out all too often to foreign competitors.
Growing dependence on imported oil has been an insistent re-
minder of the limits of the country’s once apparently inc.xhaust-
iblc resources and its vulnerability to the leverage of alien powers,
.Americans may joke about the .Ayatollah, alxiut buying Sony TV
sets and Toyota cars sshilc unemployment ir^cs in Detroit, or
.ib(?ut foreigners purchasing Amcriciin banks and rich Midwc.--tcrn
f.trmb.nd. but it is brittle laughter.

REAOAN TItE MAN. TWE PRESJDENT

leader to generate a governing coalition. The seventies demanded
greatness but spawned mediocrity reminiscent of the nineteenth-
century stewar^hips of Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Frank-
lin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

Now, with the characteristic optimism of the newly elected,
the Reagan entourage proclaims its power to overcome the na-
tional disarray and to set a new and positive course. Bolstered by
the unexpected Republican majority in the Senate and thirty-three
new scats in the House of Representatives alongside Reagan’s
0 %’D stunning electoral landslide. Republicans claim a mandate
for a bold experiment in conservatism — deep tax cuts, defense
increases, a real rollback of Federal regulations, reduced environ-
mental restraints on energy production, reduction of the size and
scope of government, and proud restoration of the vigor and vital-
ity of free enterprise.

Party leaders like Bill Brock, the national chairman, think at
long last that they discern the end of the Democratic era and per-
ceive the potential for a fundamental political realignment that
will make the Republicans (he dominant party in America for
many years to come. To (he (radirional Republican base in the
West and among white Protestant fanners, small businessmen,
and alTluent suburbanites, they took in new legions of disaffected
Southerners, Catholics, Jews, and ethnic urban blue-collar work-
ers. On Capitol Hill, right-wingers talk confidently of a conserva-
tive tide that has swept away such prominent liberal Democrats as
Senators George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of
Idaho, John Culver of Iowa, and Birch Bayh of Indiana, cham-
pions of govenmienlal activism and liberal internationalism in the
Congress. The stock market has bubbled euphorically.

Yet doubts linger. Once before, when Dwight Eisenhower won
the Presidency in 1952 after twenty years of Democratic rule, the
Republicans thought they bad overturned Roosevelt’s powerful
New Deal coalition, heralding a new political period. Later, in

turning point for the Republican Party. But in neither case was a
political watershed crossed. Democrats and their policies were

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

lalcr restored, and the nation muddied on without turning a his-
toric comer.

Now. for all the force of the new Republican conquests, the
election of 19S0 seems less an irreversible ideological tidal wave
than a massive vote of protest against the status quo. an explosion
of voter frustration against the incumbents that could turn against
the Republicans four years hence if they do not satisfy the elector-
ate. “We have brought together the elements of a new coalition,’*
obsers ed Bill Brock, the Republican chairman. “The cementing of
that coalition depends on our performance in ofiicc. We’ve got to
act with some urgcnc}' to deal with the problems on which people
voted — uncmplovmcnt and inflation."

The dimensions of the Reagan victors' in November will un-
doubtedly make the new Congress more pliable, but they will not
stifle the opposition. One liberal Democrat who suivivcd the Re-
publican sweep. Senator Gary’ Hart of Colorado, put a stark chal-
lenge to the new leadership on economic policy. "1 give the Rea-
gan administration about cichtccn to twentv-four months to
prove it doesn’t have .my answers either." Hart declared.

Tlic paradox is that with Republican control of the Senate.
Kc.igan may have won too much. Democrats cannot be blamed
for his failures and Republicans may be too slow to shed the dissi-
dent h.ibils of opposition. They may be too unaccustomed to the
responsibilities of gos'crning to puH together for Reagan’s grand
design. The nciv President may find hss major objectives caught in
?. cro'.sfuc between moderates and Islser-als who resist his emphasis
rn defer:’? and budget-cutting and nght-wingcrs who w.mt to veer
oH on i.a.ngcnts like abortion and school prayers

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

In short, now that Reagan has won the opportunity to prove
that conscrvativism works, what kind of leadership will he pro-
vide? Will he be able to raise the American standard of living and
national self-esteem sufficiently over the next four years so that in
the presidential debates of 1984 no Democrat dares pose to voters
the question that Reagan used so effectively against President
Carter. "Arc you better off today than you were four years ago?"

The challenge before Reagan now is to insure that the next
time that question is asked in earnest, the answer is yes.

A Star Is Born

Adam Clymer

Ronald Reagan set foot on the national political stage on October
27, 1964, tvhen he made a half'hour televised speech for the Re-
publican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwaier. It did not draw
much critical attention. That was long before newspapers seri-
ously covered the role of television in politics, and neither The
New York Times nor The Los Angeles Times mentioned the
speech. Neither did Theodore H. White in his The Making of the
President 1964. That collective inattention may hardly be surpris-
ing, for in the poUtics of that year the speech was incfTeclive. U did
nothing to avert electoral disaster for Goldwater, a disaster that
leR his ideological allies on the defei^ive for many years.

But 27,178,188 Americans voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964,
and a sizable fraction of them heard and watched Reagan. His
speech articulated and renewed the hopes that Goldwater’s im-
pending defeat had dulled. So, instead of despairing one week
later on Election Day, they stayed in the politics that many had
entered only to help Goldwater. Twelve and sixteen years later,
many of them were running Reagan-for-President headquarters,

A Star Is Born

Adam Clymer

RonaM Reagan set foot on the national political stage on October
27, 1964, when he made a half>hour televised speech for the Re-
publican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. It did not draw
much critical attention. That was long before newspapers seri-
ously covered the role of television in politics, and neither The
New York Times nor The Los Angeles Times mentioned the
speech. Neither did Theodore H. White in his T^e Making of the
President 1964. That collective inattention may hardly be surpris-
ing, for in the politics of that year the speech was ineffective. It did
nothing to avert electoral disaster for Goldwater, a disaster that
left his ideological allies on the defensive for many yeai3.

But 27,178,188 Americans voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964,
and a sizable fraction of them heard and watched Reagan. His
speech articulated and renewed the hopes that Goldwaier’s im-
pending defeat had dulled. So, instead of despairing one w’celc
later on Election Day, they stayed in the politics that many had
entered only to help Goldwater. Twelve and sixteen years later,
many of them were running Rcagan-for-President headquarters,

ASTARISBORN

“Noi too long ago,” he continued, “two friends of mine were
talking to a Cuban refugee. He was a businessman who had es-
caped from Castro- In the midst of his tale of horrible experiences,
one of my friends turned to the other and said, ‘We don’t know
how lucky we are.’ The Cuban stopped and said, ‘How lucky you
are? I had some place to escape to.‘ And in that sentence he told
the entire story. If freedom is lost here there is no place to escape
to.”

Twenty-seven minutes later, after touching only lightly on for-
eign policy but cataloguing the domestic failings of the Federal
government from TVA to Social Security to Federal Housing pro-
grams to tax policy, he told his audience: “You and I have a ren-
dezvous with destiny. We can preserve for our children this last
best hope of man on earth, or we can sentence them to take the
first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let
our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our
brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

But if the speech demonstrated the strengths that Reagan
could bring to a political career, it reflected some of the weak-
nesses, too. Indeed, some Goldwater campaign officials tried to
keep him from giving it on national television, although its earlier
showings in California had proved a great fund-raising success.
Their objection was to a passage in which he reopened one al-
ready painful wound of the Goldwater campaign, the subject of
Social Security. He made perfectly acceptable complaints about
the financial soundness of the Soda! Security system, but went on,
in words that would be used against him in his 1980 campaign, to
ask: “Can’t we introduce voluntary features so that those who can
make better provision for themselves are allowed to do so? Inci-
dentally, we might also allow participants in Social Security to
name their own beneficiaries, which they cannot do in the present
program. These are not insunnotmtable problems.”

That same insistence on pursuing politically lost causes turned
up most dramatically in the summer of 1 980, when Reagan would
not give up on the subject of Taiwan, a dead issue if there e^'er
was one, until he brought it up and made his own judgment, not

A STAR IS BORN

politics because of the speech.** So Tuttle and others went to Rea-
gan in early 1965, urging him lo run for Governor of California.

Tuttle and others, like Hcniy Salvatori, an oil developer, kept
urging Reagan to run. The success of his friend George Murphy
in that year’s Senate race made it clear that being a former movie
actor was no disqualiiication, something his opponents found to
their dismay when their campaign commercials making fun of his
movie roles backfired in 1966. But Reagan again demurred. Fi-
nally Tuttle went to Reagan's home again and changed tactics, not
asking him to run but asking him to let Tuttle and others explore
the possibilities.

Reagan agreed, probably without deciding if he really wanted
to run for Governor, establishing a manner of making political
decisions by one early move. This was lo be his pattern in 1968
and 1976 as well. Friends of Ronald Reagan, an organization
created by Bill Roberts and Stuart Spencer, the ace California
political managers, started drumming up support, and Reagan,
afier assuring them he was not going to run an ideological cam-
paign, decided to run by September of 1965.

It turned out to be a surprisingly easy campaign, both in the
primary and the general election. The Democrats were overconfi-
dent, and Californians had tired of Edmund G. (Pat) Brown as
Governor after eight years in o/fice. Reagan did not worry about
the movie star issue and surrounded himself on the campaign trail
with actors like Andy Devine, Chuck Cormors, and Edgar Bergen.
With little to worry about financially, the Reagan staff expanded,
and he won a relatively mild primary campaign by an overwhelm-
ing margin over George Christopher, the former Mayor of San
Francisco.

In 1980, when the candidate was sixty-nine years old, report-
ers sometimes ridiculed his light pace of campaigning, but even in
1966, at fifty-five, he often managed a nap in the afternoon. There
was less to note in the success of the Reagan campaign than in the
failures of Democratic attacks against him. They thought they
could label him as an extremist, naming him as a front man for
the John Birch Society. They counted on the movie background to

A STAR IS BORN

But the major step that Salvator!, Tuttle, and the others took
— the one that gave the effort professional credibility — was the
hiring of Cliff White. Technically his role was that of “adviser to
the California delegation.” That delegation was pledged to Reagan
as their “favorite son,” and no one moved into the state to take
him on. But White was obviously promoting a real candidate,
though the task was much trickier than it had been when he went
out early — before 1964 — for Goldwaicr, bitting one state capital
after another.

White looks back on that ultimately unsuccessful effort with
amusement. His overwhelming obstacle was the inability to
present Reagan to potential supporters as a real, live candidate.
“Californians think anyone they have elected Governor already
has the highest honor in the land, and so there was great nervous-
ness about the California reaction if he ran for President.” So
White had to settle for saying he thought Reagan would run, a
very unsatisfactory way to sell a candidate.

An even greater obstacle was that this time White was up
against the forces of Richard Nixon. If Reagan had raised $1.5
million for Republican Party organs in 1967, Nixon had raised
several times that over much more than a decade. In 1966 Nixon
had traveled almost constantly to help Republican candidates for
Congress, and a great many of them gave him credit for their suc-
cesses. In Reagan’s area of greatest strength, the South, Nixon was
well-conncctcd and popular.. The Nixon campaign was sewing up
delegates while the Reagan forces were still plotting. And in the
one state where Tom Reed and his colleagues made a serious ef-
fort, Oregon, Nelson Rockefeller won the primary with the slogan
“He cared enough to come.” Reagan, still the noncandidate, did
not cross California’s northern border, and only got 23 percent of
the vote. (He was on the ballot because the Secretary of State put
him there, under state law which requires serious potential candi-
dates to be listed.)

An increasing, and thus increasingly obvious, level of political
speaking that spring led up to the Miami Beach Republican con-
vention itself, where Reagan formally announced his candidacy

A STAR IS BORN

public ofllce as public service, and he has the high school senior’s
attitude that you do what you're expected to do, but you’re not
supposed to vote for yourself.”

But that 1 968 Reagan, jokingly diflident about the highest of-
fice in the land, and reluctant to push himself too hard, was not
the 1976 Reagan. After six more years in Sacramento (his 1970
second-term majority was only half as big. but it was still comfort-
able), satisfied that he had done a good job running the govern-
ment of the largest state in the Union (even his critics agreed that
he had not been as bad a Governor as he had threatened to be),
Reagan approached 1976 in a very different position.

First of all, be had expected Richard Nixon to serve out his
term. Then Reagan had planned to take on all comers, especially
Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, for the nomination — and to win.
But a funny thing happened on that road to the White House; Mr.
Nixon resigned his office before he could be impeached, and sud-
denly there was an incumbent Republican President, eligible for
another term, to run against.

That made a difference. Reagan had some very serious reser-
vations about running against an incumbent of his own party. The
"Eleventh Commandment" — a motto of California Republican
politics enunciated by a former state Republican chairman, Gay-
lord Parkinson — had served Reagan well in deflecting George
Christopher’s attacks on him as inexperienced in 1966, and Rea-
gan was reluctant to violate its precept: ‘Thou Shalt Not Speak III
of Other Republicans."

But while Reagan is a Republican of fixed principles, whose
political philosophy really changes only through slight shifts of
emphasis, not through fundamental reversals, he is not a tradi-
tional politician, William French Smith argues that Reagan does
not have "a lack of respect for tradition" — although to run
against President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 nomination was
plainly that. But Smith docs not disagree with the account of John
P. Sears, Reagan’s campaign manager until he was dumped in
February 1980. Tf you come to him with a dilTereni idea," said
Sears, who often did Just that, “he never told you. Things just

A STAR IS BORN

helped his campaign. But everybody else in his campaign and out
of it thinks that the defensive position he was forced to adopt
slowed his momentum and <»ntrtbuted to his narrow loss in the
New Hampshire primary — a slate many outsiders had thought
he would win.

New Hampshire in February was followed quickly by defeats
in Massachusetts, Florida, and Illinois, and the latter two stales
had, in the early flush of the campaign, seemed ripe for Reagan.
The campaign was nearly broke, and there was talk of dropping
out. It bothered Reagan, and the Eleventh Commandment began
to lose its authority for him. Complaining about how Ford would
distribute Federal grants as he campaigned, Reagan charged,
“The band doesn’t know whether to play ‘Hail to the Chief or
‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.’ ’’

But the device that made a difference was the use of Reagan,
speaking into the camera, for thirty minutes on television all over
the state. Reagan says it was his idea to make the tape, when a
Florida station decided it owed him thirty minutes of equal time.
“Everyone said. ‘How are we going to use this time?' “ he recalled
in an interview not long after. “I said, ‘TH use ii, giving my basic
speech.’ ” It made little difference in one Florida showing, but it
worked in North Carolina, where Reagan scored an upset win,
and then a new version was shown nationally and raised enough
money to keep the campaign going until the more hospitable
Texas primary on May 1.

No matter who came up with (he tactic, it was unconventional
and against the advice of the professionals who were making Rea-
gan’s rather flat commercials. And so, for the second time in his
career, a straight-on televised speech played a vital role in his ca-
reer.

In Texas, where Reagan’s conservatism, and especially his
Panama Canal formula (“We built it. we paid for it, it’s ours, and
we’re going to keep it.”) played better than country music. Reagan
profited by the fact that both Lloyd Bentsen, a Texas Senator, and
Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama were no longer serious

ASTARISBORN

old friend who had been Governor of his state when Reagan was
in Sacramento. Laxalt was Schweiker’s scatmale in the Senate,
and Reagan wanted to know if he was basically a conservative.
Laxalt said be was, so Reagan agreed to see the Pennsylvanian.

It was an intensely controversial move, which led Southern
conservatives to an undying hatred for Sears. It was a bold gamble
that did not work, but it worked no less well than standing pat
would have worked. Schweiker auracted no additional delegates
to speak of, and Reagan’s own campaigning (including an odd,
tentative offer to send American troops to Rhodesia) won few
more. It was left to Scars to try some adventures with convention
rules that he hoped would force Ford to name a running mate,
too, and thus lose either liberal or conservative support. But,
though Reagan forces won a series of platform fights, they went
down solidly to defeat at the convention, never approaching the
breakthrough needed for nomination.

After Ford won and gave a tough, enthusiastic acceptance
speech, he called Reagan up to the podium, and Reagan gave a
brief talk that outshone Ford’s, once again, as in the 1964 speech,
cheering the defeated Republican right on to fight another day.

He praised Ford, but most of all he praised the Republican
platform. "There are cynics who say that a party platform is some-
thing that no one bothers to read, and it doesn't very often amount
to much.” But this time, he said, ‘The Republican Party has a
platform that is a banner of bold unmistakable colors with no pale
pastel shades.” He talked of Americans a hundred years hence,
and said, “Whether they have the freedom that we have known up
until now will depend on what we do here. Will they look back
with appreciation and say. Thank God for those people in 1976
who headed off that loss of freedom, who kept us now a hundred
years later free, who kepi our world from nuclear destruction?

“This is our challenge. And this is why, here in this hall to-
night, better than we’ve ever done before, we’ve got to quit tatting
to each other and about each other and go out and communicate
to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than
been but we carry the message they’re wailing for. We must go

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

forth from here united, determined, believing what a great genera
said a few years ago. ‘There is no substitute for victory.’ ”

Reagan, of course, was quoting General Douglas MacArthur’5
famous 1951 farewell address to Congress, the speech that con-
cluded, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. I now close
my military career and just fade away.”

Ronald Reagan did not follow MacArthur's example.

Creating the Role

Robert Lindsey

It oHen seems that Americaa Presideots come out of regional of-
fices of Central Casting; If Jimmy Caner’s Georgia accent and de-
meanor frequently seemed to remind Americans of some of their
cliches about the rural South; John Kennedy's urbane humor,
voice, and style seemed to fit their preconceptions about upper
crust Boston; Lyndon Johnson was almost a caricature cowboy of
Texas, big, masculine, and sometimes vulgar; Richard Nixon sug-
gested a nouveau riche California, slightly insecure, on the make,
and as trustworthy as a Los Angeles car dealer, some critics would
say. Ronald Reagan represents other sides to some of those cliches
upon which people have built their images of California; he was
the handsome movie star, an immigrant from Middle America,
like millions of other Californians who came west during the
1930s to seek their fortunes and brought with them small-town
conservative Middle Western values.

Ronald Reagan is by profession a performer, and it is the sin-
gle most important fact about him. He is a consummate performer
who trained to be Governor of the nation’s most populous state

2 !

CREATING THE ROLE

emmtnt regulation, he says, and “'\“^ays solved

energy crisis; hasn’t American ingenuity

S::- S ~

we don’t. ... . worrvine about

“Well. I say, isn’t it about time we ^ ”

whether people like us and say. ‘We want to c r p

Fron^thLuralbaekwoodscfNew England o .^
or the Middle West, from the suburbs of Los A g

ment villages of Arizona and Flonda, and
words during the 1980 presidential campaig ’
from their seats by the same electric shock, rose to the.r

irom ineir seats uy n'v.

exploded into long and emotional »PP^ ,etum the

In truth, Jimmy Carter never ^'d America sb^

In truth, Jimmy carter never ‘ _ b„ause no-

Canil to Panama - or stgn the SALT 11 trea y
body would like the United States if it didn . >

Reagan’s audiences clearly longed for a ^ same

did, who felt the same gnawing feelrng in his s
uncomfortable sense of insecurity and the end 0
Americans and rheir country. But more, he was
convinced them that it didn’t have to be ’b®* „ ,i,e un-

how to turn back the clock and restore the Urn

rivaled position of power it once had j,s aa,li.

make them believe, as he often said, t Jj become

est days, had been a ’’nation of destiny vcU bv the rules, you

a land of opportunity again, where, if you played by the ru
could get ahead, maybe even get rich. Hollywood

Ronald Reagan was a member of a S'" ■"“^“Ss.u-
actors and aaresses who were bound by contracts t p

efthe moguls for fear of losmg their privileged position.

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

tract players acted on demand, reading lines written by contract
writers and directed by contract directors, rarely being given a
choice of the roles they played or a chance to play in a truly dis-
tinguished movie, aware that for every Gone With the Wind there
were a hundred lesser films.

It was from this professional milieu that Ronald Reagan
would begin his political career, and it helped m.ikc him perhaps
the most effective American political orator since Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, who. espousing virtually everything that Rea-
gan would later denounce, was. curiously, his childhood idol and
the model for his own oratorical style.

Yet Reagan did more than master the skills of oratoiy. From
his roots in the heartland of the nation during the lean years of the
Depression and later, during and after World War 11. he evolved a
person.tl set of beliefs, of what some pundits, not alw.ays approv-
ingly, called “traditio.n,tr‘ values — belief in God and the family.
Amcric.a right-or-wrong patriotism, optimism about the future,
and the conviction that hard svork will bring its rcw.irds. In later
years, he would be accused time and again of being .simplistic and
demagogic as he toured the countiy .s.iyinc. or so it icemed. th.at
the solution to vi,*iual!y .a!) of the n,ai!On"s problems was to get
government out of people's hair.

.CREATING THE ROLE

ward that he was white when he said,- ‘For such a little bit of a fat
Dutchman, he makes a hell of a lot of noise, doesn’t he?’ Ever
since my birth my nickname has been ‘Dutch,’ and I have been
particularly fond of the colors that were exhibited — red, white
and blue.”

Some youngsters who grow up in Middle Western hamlets
like Tampico, Illinois (population 1,200), deplore their isolation
and lack of big city distractions, but Reagan didn’t — or at least
he didn’t in hindsight, when he recalled his youth in his autobiog-
raphy. ‘‘My existence turned into one of those rare Huck Finn-
Torn Sawyer idylls,” he wrote of growing up in Tampico, with
“woods and mysteries, life and death among the small creatures,
hunting and fishing.” They were, he wrote, “the happiest times of
my life." It wasn’t an especially easy life; his father drank a good
deal — “He had the Irish disease.” Ronald Reagan would say
many years later— -and sometimes found it difficult to keep a job.
But John Edward Reagan, a first generation “black Irishman,”
was nevertheless an ambitious man and the family frequently
moved as he sought a better job. By all accounts he and his wife,
Nellie, presided over a family that was warm and close-knit.

From his mother, who coached a local dramatic group, Rea-
gan got his first taste of acting; his father, on the other hand, pro-
vided the earliest influence on his political outlook. Jack Reagan
was a hard worker who, much of his life, longed to own his own
store, and he eventually became part owner of one in Dixon, Illi-
nois, in 1920. The older man’s dreams of owning his own store,
and his eventual achievement of the dream, if only briefly (he lost
the store, financed on borrowed money, during the Depression),
may help explain Ronald Reagan’s later close affinity with entre-
preneurs who provided much of his financial support during his
early bids for political office.

Reagan, in his autobiography. Where's the Rest of Me?, called
his father “a sentimental Democrat who believed fervently about
the battle at Herrin in 1922, where twenty-six persons were killed
in a massacre brought about by a coal mine strike — he never lost
his conviction that the individual must stand on his own feet. . . .

CREATING THE ROUE

He graduated from Eureka in 1932 at the depth of the Depres-
sion, bitten by a bug to enter show business and uncertain how to
go about it. "Broadway and Hollywood were as inaccessible as
outer space,” he recalled later in his autobiography. He decided
that for a young college graduate in Illinois his best avenue to
achieve fame and a possible eventual bid from Hollywood or
Broadway was radio, and he succeeded in landing a job in Daven-
port, Iowa, at station WOC (the initials stand for World of Chiro-
practic, an indirect tribute to Colonel B.L. Palmer of the Palmer
School of Chiropractic, who founded the station). On WOC and
later on a sister station, WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, Reagan
began to excell at a new art form — broadcasting play-by-play de-
scriptions of baseball games that he didn't attend, but pretended
to, by reconstructing the events from Western Union reports of
each play. Dutch Reagan, talkative, persuasive, and giiled with a
voice and demeanor that gave him credibility, was soon one of the
best known play-by-play announcers in the Middle West, and
when he wasn’t on the radio, he found himself in growing demand
to give speeches to local clubs and other organizations.

He still had his ambitions for bigger things, though, and in
1937, while he accompanied the Chicago Cubs on a trip to south-
ern California for spring training, he looked up a friend who had
contacts in the Hollywood studios. Reagan, who is nearsighted (he
now wears contact lenses), was advised to take off his glasses for
the interview and screen test 'that followed. Within a few days, he
had a contract with Warner Brothers.

In subsequent years, political adversaries depicted Reagan as
a "second rate actor in B pictures” or “the nice guy who never got
the girl.” It is true from a retrospective look at Reagan’s films that
he did not possess some of the qualities that elevated some of his
contemporaries and competitors, such as Gary Cooper, Clark
Gable, Robert Taylor, or Errol Flynn, to superstardom. Neverthe-
less, it is equally clear that until his career was sidetracked by
World War II, and, to an extent, by his own post-war obsession
with the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan had a more than successful
film career and delivered several portrayals that earned him

CREATINO THE ROLE

Before leaving Iowa, Reagan had joined the Army cavalry as
a reserve officer, and he was activated after Pearl Harbor. But, be-
cause of his poor eyesight, he was given “limited duty," which
meant he ivas assigned to a unit making training films for the
Army Air Corps. Situated not far from the MGM studios in Cul-
ver City, the unit was called by some of its members, including
stars such as Alan Ladd, the “Culver City Commandos” and
“Fort Wacky." On occasion, he noted in his autobiography, it un-
dertook projects that were vital to the war effort. “Possibly our
most important job was also our most secret — in fact, it was one
of the better kept secrets of the war, ranking up with the atom
bomb project. . . ,

“All on our own, our special effects men — Hollywood gen-
iuses in uniform — built a complete miniature of Tokyo. It cov-
ered most of the floor space of a sound stage; above this they
rigged a crane and camera mount and could photograph the
miniature, giving an effect on the screen of movies taken from a
plane traveling at any prescribed height and speed."

When Army Air Corps generals heard about the project, Rea-
gan wrote, they were dubious and sent a delegation to inspect a
film simulating flight over Tokyo that was made using the tech-
nique. “Skepticism turned to enthusiasm," Reagan recalled, say-
ing that the military offleers concluded that the technique offered
an otherwise unavailable means to give pilots a dress rehearsal be-
fore they bombed Tokyo.

When the war ended, a number of things had changed for
Ronald Reagan. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, his career had been
on the ascendant. He was getting better and better roles in films
such as King’s Row. he was earning more critical acclaim, and
Warner Brothers had tripled his salary not long before he was
placed on active military duty.

After the war, while he continued to make pictures, he never
managed to recapture his career’s pre-war momentum; with a few
exceptions, he was relegated again to B pictures with poor scripts.
“I had a sneaking suspicion that a lot of people across America

CREATING THE ROLE

During the early thirties, all three of the Reagan males were
strong New Deal Democrats, but toward the close of the decade
Neil Reagan began to complain that Franklin D. Roosevelt had
gone too far. Ronald Reagan later noted that he first began to be
aware of what he considered the inefficiency and blunted incen-
tives that result from an overgrown government while listening to
his father talk about the Federal bureaucracy that had grown up
around the W.P.A.; at one time, both worked for the Works
Projects Administration. Neil Reagan had also become troubled
by his inside look at government; he had become loosely affiliated
with the Democratic machine in Chicago and told his brother that
he was appalled by the corruption and patronage he witnessed
and that he was thinking about leaving the Democratic Party.
Ronald Reagan's antipathy was intensified, he said, during the
war when he had his own first experiences with government effi-
ciency: As the base personnel officer at Culver City, he wanted to
lay off certain civilian employees who he felt were incompetent or
unneeded. But he was prohibited from doing so by civil service
regulations, and be didn't like it.

But it was probably Reagan's experience as a labor leader and
bis own increasing personal affluence as he grew older, as well as
his subsequent role as spokesman for General Electric, that set
him on the final course of his political evolution.

Reagan was recruited in 1938 to be a director for the Screen
Acton Guild, a union formed five years earlier to give perfonners
more clout in dealing with the all-powerful studios. After his re-
lease from the Army in 1945, be rejoined the board and was
elected president of the union in 1947, remaining in this role until
mid-1952; he was elected for another one-year term in 1959.

It was in some ways an ugly lime for Hollywood, the era of the
Communist witch hunt in which the House Committee on Un-
American Activities was trying to uproot Communist sympathiz-
ers who, its members claimed, had used the power of the screen to

rintfterpro-5'ovwr propagam^a. /f ‘black-list.

when writers and directors who had belonged to certain leftist
groups or who had refused to answer some of the committee s

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

questions were refused work in the film industry. It was also a
time when there were indeed attempts by Communist-dominated
labor unions and other organi^ations to influence the film indus-
try’, a powerful communications force in the United States.

Although the matter is still the subject of some debate in Hol-
lyv<.'ood, by most accounts Reagan acquitted himself honorably as
a moderate during the film industry's crisis; he resisted what he
called “unofficial blacklists,” while leading an cfTective campaign
against the relatively small but bona fide efforts of Communist or-
ganizations to grab power in the film community.

After an appearance before the House Committee on Un-
Amcrican Activities in 1947. Reagan returned to Los Angeles to
face another kind of crisis. The Hollywood go.ssip columns had al-
ready reported that the Ronald Reagan-Jane Wyman marriage
was in trouble, and in February 194S they separated. There was a
brief, unsuccessful reconciliation, but that spring .Miss Wyman
told a Los Angeles judge that she could not continue the marriage.
Her husband, she testified, had become so obsessed with the union
and his political interests that there was no time left for her.
"There was nothing in common between us, nothing to sustain
our marri.agc,” she .said. Miss Wyman was .awarded custody of
their two children. Maureen and .Michael.

CREATING THE ROtE

ensued. He learned that there were two Nancy Davises, and the
other actress had joined what Reagan called the “bleeding heart”
groups. Ronald Reagan had met a woman who not only shared
his views that America faced a grave threat from Communism but
agreed with him on just about everything else he said politically.
Nancy Reagan would become the final important influence in
shaping the thinking of Ronald Reagan before he began his mis-
sionary work for the General Electric Company. On March 4,
1952, they were married.

Many of the people who have watched the political ascend-
ancy of Ronald Reagan say they believe that Nancy Reagan could
be the single most important influence on him in the White
House. From all appearances, they are extremely close, and Mrs.
Reagan has become not only his wife but his political confidante,
adviser, sounding board, and the person to whom he most ofien
turns in trying to judge the motives and sincerity of people around
him.

Although be discounts her role in shaping his conservative
philosophy, their politics are practically indistinguishable. In her
case, they largely reflect a background of affluence and security
and the influence of her stepfather. Dr. Loyal Davis, a politically
conservative Chicago surgeon, now retired. Dr. Davis married
Mrs. Reagan’s mother after her father, a New Jersey car salesman,
had deserted the family when she was an infant, forcing her to be
placed with relatives while her mother tried to support the family
as an actress. Mrs. Reagan was adopted by Dr. Davis when she
was fourteen.

She attended Girls Latin School in Chicago and Smith Col-
lege and, encouraged by her mother, came to Hollywood during
the 1940s, where she was one of thousands of other would-be star-
lets but was helped by the influence of Spencer Tracy and other
friends other parents who worked in the film industry. When she
arrived at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, she filled out a
questionaire and, in response to a question on what her “greatest
ambition" was, she said. “To have a successful happy marriage.”

REAGAK TITE MAN. TOE PRES!DENT

She was asked if she had any particular phobia and responded,
“Superficiality. Vulgarity, especially in women. Untidiness of
mind and person. And cigars."

She went on to appear in eleven movies, most of them undis-
tinguished, including one. Hellcats of the Navy, in which she co-
starred with her husband.

But this 1957 movie turned out to be the finale of her Holly-
wood career and she retired, in effect, to be Mrs. Ronald Reagan.

In Hollywood, she almost always played roles as ssvcct, femi-
nine ingenues — an image that, in retrospect, she has maintained
in her private life; she deplores many changes in modem morality,
such a.s Ihx-in rcl.ationships and premarital sex and abortion. It is
a siew of life that she shares with her husband and apparently was
assimilated in her well-off. middlc-cla.ss upbringing in Chicago.

Some people who have worked with Ronald Reagan have
been critical of him as being overly reliant on others’ opinions be-
fore making decisions and for having a tendency to t.ikc the ad-
vice of the last penon who spoke to him on a p.irticubr problem.
If this is true, Nancy Rcag.an could be the second most important
person in the Reagan administration because she is the one in
whom Rc.tgan has the most confidence, according to people who
know both crihem.

Ill

California Rehearsal

Robert Lindsey

In Hollywood, if you didn't sing or dance, you would end up as
an after-dinner speaker, so they made me an after-dinner
speaker. Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan, then fifty-fivc years old, was sworn in as
Governor of California at sixteen minutes past midnight on Janu-
ary 2, 1967. The previous November he had beaten the Demo-
cratic incumbent, Edmund (Pat) Brown, the father of the man
who would become Reagan’s successor, by almost one million
votes. With thirty-two television cameras focused on him. and
looking as handsome and boyish as he did on a movie screen,
Reagan glanced over at his old sidekick from Hollywood, United
States Senator George Murphy, and quipped, “Well, here we are
on the late show again.”

For cynics around the country, the comment must have con-
firmed everything they thought about California. It was the ulti-
mate California joke: two Hollywood celluloid celebrities, a politi-
cally inexperienced movie actor and a former song and dance

CALIFORNIA REHEARSAL

vi«d Reagan ,0 give a speech at one of onr fund-taisets,
"“hon*h= had h'cotne

Reagan remained uneasy ^te with the kind of Chi-

aU. a calling that he often told him about years

cago ward heelers whom fiends from Hollywood or the

earlier. Instead, he preferred especially contemporaries

come to CaUfomia “arinB *= > ,,,, „f ambition
Dust Bowl without much roon > nve his father, were entre-

preneurs, but unlike his father, they . .5 economic sue-

carded private enterprise as ‘h' portion of the

cess and they objected when they s 5 ^^ ^ government that
profits from their work dtsapP'« ^ anivities that right-
rtey felt was wasteful and « and encouraged people

fully belonged to the private entrepreneur,

not to work. ir man " Tuttle once said of

••Every one of them is a self-made m , |j.^aaire Baekeis.
the group that became known as a^hed Reagan, he

In a discLsion of why they had system. We fell that if ■'

aaidt “We believed in the free around bellyachmg

was going to be preserved. “■*'“^ ° ,Ung about it. We gathere>i

'^"California has a long if “""“X f “ug”y°s'cIndaU before the

CALIFORNIA REHEARSAL

they didn’t understand, and heeding warnings from Reagan that
this country’s military capabilities were inferior to the Soviet
Union’s, turned to a candidate who seemed to say he could not
only protect what they had hut could assure them -that their lives
would continue to get better. It was in California that Reagan first
discovered this constituency.

At the time he was elected Governor of California, the state
had long had a laod'afopportunity image of boundless popuk'
tion growth. The image was encouraged by its real estate huck-
sters and publicists, and augmented by the celluloid exports of
Hollywood, which frequently portrayed a glamorous fantasy land
that never really existed except on the screen. But by 1967 it was
beginning to show a few signs of middle age. Immigration of peo-
ple from outside the state, a hallmark of California as much as its
climate during most of its history, and a torrent during the fifties
and early sixties, had started to slow significantly. There was
beginniog to be less talk about California’s benign sun, Holly-
wood glamour, and boundless opportunities and more talk about
its smog, urban congestion, and crime. Its gilt-edged aerospace in-
dustry, which had grown with the velocity of a rocket from World
War 11 through the early sixties, was laying off employees and bad
entered a deep slump. It was a time of social upheaval. The Berke-
ley campus of the University of California had erupted with the
Free Speech Movement in 1964 and the Watts ghetto in Los An-
geles blew the following year. College campuses were aflame with
dissent over the Vietnam War and other causes, angering many
middle class Californians who, like Ronald Reagan, had fought
hard to survive the Depression and couldn’t understand why the
rebellious students didn’t appreciate their affluence and their
chance for a college education.

California was still a kind of national melting pot where peo-
ple from elsewhere fled to escape their problems at home and ex-
periment with new lifestyles and new religions, and every so often
it still produced a Charles Mamou or a Jim Jones. But in other
ways it was maturing, becoming more Middle America, less
Lotusland. It was becoming more conventional, more conserva-

CALIFORNIA REHEARSAL

as Governor called hts claims of savings overblown. An improved
economy, which led to the creation of more jobs, and other fac-
tors, they said, including the effects of more than 250,000 abor-
lions that were performed on welfare mothers under legislation
signed by Reagan in 1967 (he later said he regretted signing the
bill) probably did more to cut the welfare case load than Reagan’s
subsequent welfare eligibility reform.

Despite such quarrels over the details of his accomplishments,
the Reagan record in Sacramento is generally regarded as favora-
blc, but his successes followed a rocky road at first, “We weren’t
just amateurs,” his press scCTctary would say later of the first two
or three years in Sacramento, *^6 were novice amateurs,”

Shortly after his inauguration, Reagan announced to Califor-
nians that he had made a discovery. The administration of Fat
Brown, and by inference the Legislature, had “looted and
drained” the state, he said, and had left the Reagan administra-
tion with a deficit of almost $200 million. In a speech that bad
echoes of some of those by his one-time hero, FDR, Reagan de-
clared, “Not since the bleak days of the Depression — during
which California was forced to such desperate measures our credit
was afteaed for decades — have we faced such a dark picture . . .
California for the last year has been spending $ 1 million a day
more than it has been taking in.”

Some of his critics would say ihcn and later that Reagan had
overstated the seriousness of the fiscal crisis, but indeed the outgo-
ing Democratic administration had done some tinkering with
bookkeeping that had enabled it to avoid asking for an election-
year tax increase, and it had left the legacy of a large deficit on
Reagan’s desk. The new Governor told Californians that the state
had no alternative but to raise taxes, and soon the Legislature bad
passed the largest increase in the slate’s history, one which
brought in almost $1 billion a year in additional revenue. This
would be the first of three major tax packages and several smaller
ones that raised virtually every category of levy in the stale and
consistently brought in more money than the Republican adminis-
tration said they would.

CALIFORNIA REHEARSAL

occurred at a meeting early in 1971 between Reagan and Moretti.
Reagan was still not getting many of his reforms through the
Legislature, and he was continuing to make his feelings for legis-
lators known to all who would listen.

Moretti, a liberal Democrat who was opposed to virtually
every line of the conservative rhetoric Reagan unleashed at any
opportunity, telephoned the Governor early in 1971 and said he
wanted to see hi m — alone.

“There was just the two of us,” Moretti said later. “We had
never been alone. There were always staff people around when we
met. I walked into his office and said he had not been impotent.
Using his considera. talents to sell a point of view, he had re-
peatedly taken his case directly to voters via television.” The
rhetoric had had an effect; public opinion polls perennially gave
him high ratings, and it seemed clear that much of the public
shared bis view of the professional politicians in the Legislature,
creating a situation that, in effect, helped persuade Moretti to sue
for peace. “Reagan’s very good at going to the people,” says A.
Alan Post, who served as legislative analyst for the state during
the Reagan years and was often his critic. “He’s extraordinarily
good at formulating a political issue to the public and getting
them on his side."

Reagan accepted Moreiti’s offer of a truce and a chance to get
One of his most imporant goals — the welfare reform legislation
— moving in the legislature. After seventeen days and late nights
of negotiations, the Reagan conservatives and the Moretti liberals
Worked out a classic political oompromise. Reagan got reforms
significantly narrowing the eligibility for welfare while the liberals
got his acceptance of higher benefits and automatic cost-of-living
increases for those who remained on welfare. After that, there
were more disputes with the Legislature, but he had learned to
compromise, and more and more of his proposals passed the
Le^slature.

‘The fint two years were miserable,” William Baglcy, one
prominent legislator at the time, remembered, “but either by de-
sign or experience or luck, it changed. After the first two years, I

CAttfOROTA REHEARSAL

al least in the field of education, which 1 know about, he did not
try to manipulate it in a partisan way, he wasn’t a racist, he did his
homework, and he was well or;ganlzed. He was an administrator
in the sense that he set the pKtltcics and directions and chose good
people to cany them out.”

Besides his effectiveness in applying pressure on legislators by
going to the people (a technique he said he learned from FDR)
via television, Reagan, after his difficult first years in Sacramento,
discovered the value of a provision of California law giving the
Governor a “line item” veto power. It enabled him not only to
scuttle individual spending proposals, which had been approved
by the Legislature, if he didn’t like them, but also to reduce spend-
ing on individual items. One of the keys to his success in Sacra-
mento, this law gave him a potent power, which he will not have
as President, to shape programs and deal with uncooperative
legislators. In all, during the eight years in Sacramento, he used
his veto 994 times.

Reagan frequently came under criticism in the press for seem-
ing to have a shallow understanding of some issues, a result of
misstatements at news conferences; bis slip-ups appeared to reflect
his style of running California, with his tendency to delegate au-
thority to subordinates and rely on the four-paragraph “mini
memos” to gather information he used in making decisions. His
aides, however, defended his reliance on the mini memos as an ef-
fective management tool. "Some people joked about them,” said
Caspar Weinberger, who served Reagan as State Director of Fi-
nance and was later Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
under President Nixon, "but they were backed up by more infor-
mation. The Governor sought out more information when he
needed it. The memos were a very effective way to take a large
problem and present a kind of distillation of it that focused the
discussion. Then the Governor would apply his own Judgment to
the problem,”

Reagan was also atiacied by leaders of orgaitrred ethaic {ah'
norities for neglecting the poor, for attempting to curtail spending
on mental hospitals and trying to impose more control from Sac-

CALIFORNU REHEARSAL.

Proposition 13, he led an effort to place a similar, if less sweeping,
property tax limitation law before the state’s voters. The measure
lost after a bitter campaign in which public employees spent heav-
ily to defeat it. But Reagan bad anticipated the rising public anger
over taxes that would boil over as Proposition 13.

In a 1968 interview with James Reslon of The New York
Times, he said: “I am convinced that there is a wave sweeping the
land that started in 1966. A wave of desire for a change, dissatis-
faction on the part of the people over what’s been going on, a feel-
ing that many of the programs that were bom with such promise
have not bom fruit." The same year, in a speech to the Economic
Club of New York, he said; “At the moment, there appears to be a
panic fear afloat in the air, partly due to a feeling of helplessness,
a feeling that government is now a separate force beyond their
control, that their voices echo uiUieeded in the vast and multitudi-
nous balls of government. I do not remember a time when so
many Americans, regardless of their economic or social standing,
have been so suspicious and apprehensive of the aims, the cred-
ibility, and the competence of the Federal establishment. There is
a question abroad in the land: ’What is happening to us?’ "

As a day-to-day manager and decision-maker in Sacramento,
Reagan patterned his style largely after the chairman of a corpo-
ration who, most days, got to his office shortly before nine in the
morning and left a little before six at night. He delegated consid-
erable authority to subordinates and tended to avoid getting in-
volved in the details of problem-solving, hearing out his subordi-
nates’ recommendations and then making his decision based on
their advice, usually through a mechanism called a “mini memo,"
a one-page, four-paragraph summary of a problem and his staffs
recommendations on how to solve it.

His style occasionally brought criticism. John P. Sears, who
managed his presidential campaign in 1976 and was in charge in
1980 until Reagan fired him early in the year, made some obser-
valions about tiis tormer doss liran arttwlr

ington Post after his dismissal: “If his advisers are adequate, there

CACJFORNIA REHEARSAL

serious scandals ever touched his California administration. In all,
more than 200 business people were brought into state govern-
ment by Reagan, most of them on short-term “task forces” to
recommend ways to improve government efficiency.

Tuttle and his associates began scouting for possible recruits
for the Reagan presidential administration early in 1980.

Long afler he left Sacramento, a debate would continue over
the Reagan years in California. His supporters would say that his
record speaks for itself; that he had run an administration that was
efiicient, slowed the growth rate of government, and left the state
in solid financial condition. Some of his critics would describe
him as a man who is often unable to grasp the nuances of a com-
plex problem and who, after all, is still a performer — the actor
turned after-dinner speaker.

Jn 1975, bis predecessor. Pet Sroiw?, mote: “J nvtiid aihw
that Ronald Reagan is undoubtedly a sincere man. I also believe
that he is in reality what he appears to be: a simple man. His
ideas, his philosophy, his perceptions, his comprehension of
human affairs and society are also neatly confined to a simple
framework of thought and action that permits no doubts and ac-
knowledges no sobering complexities. No wonder his manner is
that of a man with utter confidence in his own fundamentalist
purity and integrity. The efficient missionary dedicated to eradi-
cating evil.”

But Brown argued that life was seldom as simple as it was de-
fined to be by Reagan. “Long before the computer took over our
everyday affairs, Reagan was being ‘programmed’ by writers and
directors, molded by producers and sold by promotion and pub-
licity men. Small wonder he still finds it easy to absorb and adopt
the thinking of the people around him and that he is most com-
fortable with the healthy, the successful, and the self-assured — a
mirror image of Reagan as he sees lumself.”

On the Supply Side

Leonard Silk

Ronald Reagan's domesUc economic policy for the four years
ahead remains something of a mystery. This is not because Rea*
gan has managed, or even tried, to keep his economic views secret.
On the contrary, his conservative program, however broadly
stated, has been central to bis drive for the President, and has
been thoroughly exposed. The real problem at this point is that
Rcaganite economics consists of an inchoate set of numbers, goals,
and doctrines (some cautiously conservative, some radically con-
servative) whose ultimate concrete form will depend on tests of
strength between factions in his own party, conflicts between his
administration and Congress, and Mr. Reagan's resolution of his
own inner conflicts.

On the economic front, the Reagan drive to the White House
was powered by two quite diflerent types of conservatives. One
was a group of conservative "populists” whose main objective (in
the spirit of the California Proposition 13 tax revolt) was to slash
taxes, eliminate government programs except in the defense area,
slash government regulation, and release the energies of private

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

individuals and private business. This group of populists — and
the politicians and economists who sought to give their desires co-
herence and a rationale in economic theory — was dominated by
small- and medium-sized business, farmers, homeowners, reti-
rees. white-collar and even many blue-collar workers; “Middle
.Americans," many of them with scant sympathy for those below
them (especially those on welfare) nor much sympathy toward Big
Business. Indeed, many in this populist group have regarded Big
Business, and its internationally oriented institutions such as the
Trilateral Commission or the Council on Foreign Relations, as a
kind of conspiracy designed to serve the interests of multinational
corporations rather than that of America. (Earlier in the cam-
paign. George Bush resigned from the Council on Foreign Rela-
tions to ward off such attacks.)

Hut, within the Reagan camp, particularly after he had se-
cured his hold on the nomination, were these very representatives
of Big Business and Dig Finance, and their professional economic
counsellors, who constitute the Republican Establishment. The
thinking of this group, though not in clear conflict with that of the
{wpnlists on every issue, %v.as focused primarily on the importance
of checking inflation, stimulating corporate investment, presers-
ing lire stability of the international monetary system, balancing
the budget, rcstr.aining monetary growth — and ensuring the
f t.'sbility. rather than rapid grow th, of the domestic economy.

ONTHESUPPLYSIDE

He has sough, to ^may the

Frauklm D. Roosevelt, and lus IM „jj Depression.

■•Carter Depression” as is"o. in a depression;

Obviously, the American eco ^ ^ January, almost cer

indeed, the 1980 recession, ^ ^ ,echm-

tainly ended in the third quartcr.^”^ C},==n-

calty, efforts by Reagans president Gerald R

span, die former chief f Institute, to explam to

Ford, and Martin Anderson, ofthcHoo ^

Reagan that the economy ^ , „„ behind his use of the

downswing- did no. touch the ma p T economy under

distortions which of =“8ua.in8 pn>du«.on

of “stagflation — tha -nd uncer-

pnse can be ^jih rising convert to the

rate of economic gr uy that made ^ ^ Professor Arthur

I,wasthisph.losoJy'J^„,t edvisers as
“supply-side “ ef southern Representative

La^er of die « " r yhe .Pu» V. Roth,

former editonal ^ York; and Kemp-

Jack Kemp of «P ^n ga« bis hearty percent through

of Delaiv-'; income .«es by „ e

"■rrs " serrs"- • ■ -

curve “ named

~ 53

ONTHESUPPI.VS'DE

,0 be carried out would have to go „ore

The Reagan-dommated ^ ”L^d„elopment of the MX

••survivable” nuclear m.«i efoi«,eaJ „f a new

nussile, accelerated „ „cotiLed Carter for aban-

manned B-1 '”!“tSystetn. strategic cruise missdes

donin5),amod=mueda.rdefe^ e«ed

and other strategic weapons. The P

the nuUtary .draft of -a"!"*'' " “ ,„d benef.ts of career

for “correcting the great inequiues tn p y

miUtary personnel." buildup will cost is unclear, but

How much Reagan s „p=nditutes, exclud-

i, appears likely to mean , yU if it were to be

tag the effect of inllation, by ’ “ ’ P' ^ j/ukely to lift the cost

fulyrealired. If one assumes that mn^^ ,b«

of Lional defense by ® nditures to a 'ange of $3W

would mean ‘“"'“‘"S '* 'or, f,„rthe fiscal 1981 level of $159
billion to $320 billion by 1985 from n

billion, roughly doubUng them m foua« ,„,bot in m^-

George P. Shulu said m an mt immune from scru-

October that the defense budget wou^ stressed that

tiny for the y^Ung as the strengthening of Unite

was so vital, in Reagans thinking.

States defense capabilities. encompassed wnhio

How can this huge defend bu Id p e^ountmg to $250

budget plan which also hwl-des h“Se

biUion to $300 billion by fiscal^. which Reaga"

Solving that budgetary nddle wa ^ shulB

conservative economic advBcrs-the o 8 „ National

and Alan Greenspan - '“'‘'1’"' Reagan was not being

Convention. They sought to pro ojcatly increase defense

sponsible in suggesting that he co“U _ and still balance

penditures and cut takes by about h

the budget and slow down inflatio ^ September 9. 1 -

The fruits of their labor were aud Stab y

as "Ronald Reagan’s Strategy for Econom

IN THE BEGINNING

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LONGTIMf: FRIENDS AND BACKERS

J«ci Wr»»hcr. 62, is one of the youniest of
Reagm'i Jonjiime fnendi * nd baclm He met
Reagan through hu wife, Bonita Granville, a
formtr rhild star who worked with Reagan in
one of her films His company. The Wrather
Corporation, is a muliiroiUion-dolUr com-
hiMlioo ofoil, entertainment, and real estate
Wrather u. perhaps the most daring entre-
preoeurofthegroup When asked what role he
wouldplayasaReaganadmimsirationadviser,
hf repJred, “JVJ he a good friend, Tve tlwsys
Uttil to be “ (The S'tw fork Times)

Earle M Jorgensen, B2, is the active cbairman
of (he tteel company he founded at the age of
twenty-three— one of the few major American
steel companies prospering today. A close
personal friend of Reagan's, he ti a pragfluiw:
businessman whose motto is 'Hustle*— that's
aJJ Tmet)

Holinei F Tuiile, 7J, began his career as an
automobite salesman in Lot Angeles and first
met Reagan in 1946 when he sold him a car A
h'ghiysueensfulandwell-regardedpilMrofihe
California tinanctai eommuniiy Tuttle has
hecn an active political supporter of Reagan
since 1964 Tuttle, along with Oart. it con-
sideied to be Reagan's closest confidant from
the world of big butinett (The Ntm Tort

William French Smith, 62, the other junior
member of the group, is a highly successful
senior partner with one of the two largest taw
firms in Los Angeles Smith has known
Reagan since before bis 1966 campaign for
Governor and u his personal attorney The
director of silt California companies. Smith is
one of the three trustees of Reagan's business
interests and is as strongly groundetl m
business as he is in law (Wide World)

INTOCALIFORNJA POLITICS

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and former V«e-PrtfideniRiebardNu<x»eo{3gejD» three-way handshake before walkingio
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Opposite page, boitopt

The Winner' Reagan green lupponer* as be acknowledges hit victory as Governor of
California over tvko-ierm incumbent Edmund G (Pai) Brown ftfiife K'orfii)

CaMortiia Governor Reagan leads the way as grand marshal of a Veteran's Day parade in
Oregon (AP)

RONALD REAG^'^/LEE
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THf. governor

ONTUESUPPLYSIDE

growth”; (4) ‘The establishment of a stable and sound monetary
poli^”; and (5) “The restoration of confidence by following a
consistent national economic policy that docs not change from
month to month.”

But the details of the strategic plan do not back up this strong,
adjectival rhetoric. The control of the growth of Federal spending
to “reasonable, prudent” levels would depend on the elimination
of many billions of dollars in unspecified waste and fraud. “The
reports of waste, extravagance, abuse, and outright fraud,” ac-
cording to the Reagan plan, “are legendary." This waste, it assert-
ed, lies buried "deep in hundreds of Federal programs” and it will
take a sustained effort lasting years to extract it.

Afier the signal failure of Jimmy Carter’s elaborate experi-
ment with “zero-base budgeting” to produce significant savings —
and the more than doubling of expenditures in California under
Reagan's Governorship, with annual state expenditures climbing
from S4.6 billion to $ 10.2 billion despite his promise to “cut and
squeeze and trim” — there is widespread skepticism that Reagan
can reduce Federal spending by scores of billions of dollars by
eliminating waste, fat, and fraud.

Reagan has stressed that he does not mean to hold down Fed-
eral spending by eliminating programs. In the televised debate
with President Carter on October 28, Reagan, when asked where
he would cut government spending if be were to increase defense
spending and also cut taxes, said, “Well, most people when they
think about cutting government spending, they think in terms of
eliminating necessary programs or wiping out something, some
service that government is supposed to perform. I believe that
there is enough extravagance and fat in government. As a matter
of fact, one of the Secretaries of H.E.W, under Mr. Carter testified
that he thought there was S7 billion worth of fraud and waste in
welfare, and in the medical programs associated with it. We’ve
had the General Accountiag Office estimate that there are prob-
ably tens of billions of dollars lost in fraud alone, and they have
added that waste adds even more to that.”

ONTHESUPPLYSIDE

rules requiring more highway construction work for minority and
women subcontractors.*

There were other equally controversial proposals submitted to
the task force: raising the ages at which Social Security benefits
would be payable, revising the consumer price index to produce
lower inflation figures, cutting welfare payments by using FBI
“strike forces" to look for welfare fraud and by giving stales a
cash bounty for convicting welfare cheaters, giving states freedom
to design and run their own welfare systems, and reducing or
eliminating Federal safety requirements on automakers. None of
these proposals has yet been accepted by Reagan.

He has, however, announced that he will call for an immedi-
ate freeze on the level of Federal employment. But President Car-
ter already had such a freeze in effect months earher. Caspar
Weinberger said the Reagan freeze on Federal hinng would be
“more efTectiye” than Carter's had been.

The central logic underlying (he Reagan fiscal strategy is the
assumption that the tax revenues of the Federal government will,
as a result of infiatioR and real economic growth, increase enor-
mously over the next five years, while expenditures are held well
below the grotv-th of revenues. Hence, it is argued, huge tax cuts
can still be made consistent with movement toward a balanced
budget — and even sizable budget surpluses by 1 9S5.

As a base for their planning, the Republican strategists take
the Senate Budget Committee estimates of a rate of real economic
growth of 1 to 3.8 percent in the next five years, an inflation rate
that declined slowly to 7.5 percent by 1985, and an unemployment
rate that comes down to 6.i percent by that year. On those as-
sumptions, the Senate committee estimated that the revenue of the
Federal government would rise to SI, 102 billion by fiscal year
1985, an increase of $58-4 billion over the fiscal 1980 level. Then, if
Federal outlays were held to an increase of $920 billion by 1985,
the budget would show a surplus orSI82 billion in that year. But
is this likely to happenTExpemiiturcs may not de rieih’abwn; ide

' 77ie iValf Street Journaf.OcL 24, t98Q,p I.

ON THE SUPPLY SIDE

fiscal 1^80 to $27 billion in 1981 and S6 billion in 1982; and it
foresees budget surpluses of $23 billion in 1983, $62 billion in
1984,andS121 billion in provided thatihe Reagan adminis-
tration fully achieves its spending-reduction goal of 10 percent. If it
achieves only its partial goal for spending reduction of 7 percent,
however, it still projects budget deficits of only $27 billion and $2 1
billion in 1981 and 1982 respectively, a balanced budget in 1983,
and surpluses of $28 billion and $93 billion in 1984 and 1985, re-
spectively.

Will the Reagan dontesiic economic policy of steep tax cuts
and expenditure holddowns work to revive the United States
economy while reducing inflation?

The assumptions on which Reagan^s plan is based are so un-
certain that any economic analysis of his proposed strategy must
be regarded as little better than an educated guess. However, the
consensus view of forty-two leading e<»nomic forecasters, includ-
ing those of some of the nation's largest businesses, banks, and
econometric forecasting services, is that Reagan's proposed tax
cuts are excessive and would be likely to “further fuel inflation,”
as Eggert Economic Enterprises, Inc., summarized the consensus
resulting from its survey.

The economists surveyed by Eggert also criticized the vague-
ness of Reagan’s plans for cutting government spending by 7 per-
cent to 10 percent by eliminating “waste and fraud.” They were
skeptical that he would come close to balancing his budget if he
stuck to his plans for greatly increasing defense spending while
steeply cutting taxes.

Analysis of the Reagan plan of September 9 by Chase Econo-
metrics, the forecasting subsidiary of the Chase Manhattan Bank,
found that the plan, if realized, would make unemployment “sig-
nificantly higher” and would have “little or no impact on produc-
tivity, investment or real economic growth.” However, Chase
Econometrics found that the Reagan program would have some

' See Table I below.

effecl in bringing down the rale of inflation, primarily through its
cuts in government spending — assuming, of course, that the ad-
vertised cuts of $64 billion to $92 billion were to be realized in the
next four years.

The Chase analysis found that, if the Reagan plan were to be
implemented, teal gross national product — the economy's total
output of goods and services, adjusted for inflation — would rise
by only one-tenth of 1 percent in 1981, and by about 3 percent an-
nually thereafter through 1985.* Inflation would be 9 percent in
1981 and would come down gradually to 7.1 percent in 1985. But
unemployment would reach 8.9 percent in 1981 and hang on at a
9 percent rale, reaching 9.2 percent in 1985. This implies that the
number of jobless workers would mcrease from 9.5 million in
1981 to 10.5 million in 1985, as the work force continued to grow.

Econometrics being the uncertain science it is — and the Rea-
gan plan being as vague as it is — no one should take the Chase
analysis or any other too literally. And if one changed the assump-
tions in the Reagan plan — for instance, by assuming that while
President Reagan might get most of the tax cuts he sought, he
would achieve hardly any of the muUibillion-doIlar expenditure
reductions he is proposing — the outlook would be for greater
inflation and less unemployment.

However, Reagan’s supply-side economists and politicians
contend that conventional economic analysis underestimates the
impact of his economic strategy and free-enterprise philosophy on
individual and business incentives, efforts, and confidence. They
say it will make an enormous difference to real growth to get gov-
ernment off the back of the private economy. The Reagan plan
calls for "a thorough and systematic review of the thousands of
Federal regulations that affect the economy,” contending that in

> Tbe R«Agaa estincles, as set forth ut the strategic plan for growth aod subduy
of September 9, 1980. themselves prefect that the program of tax cuts, growing to
a total of 1192 billion by fiscal >ear 1983. would ^d only S39 billion to nominal
GNP in that year. The additional economic growth resulting from the fiscal
stimulus io the preceding years is csiinuted by the Reagan advisen as SS biUioa
tn 1981, SIO bilhoQ in 1982. SIS tnllioo in 1983. and S20 billioQ in 1984 See

ONTHE SUPPLY SIDE

uncertainty about the future actions of government. In a Reagan
administration, every effort will be made to establish and begin to
implement economic policy early — within the first ninety days —
and then to stick to the essentials of this polii^.”

One of the first actions President Reagan is likely to lake on
assuming office wiU be to send a tax package to Congress recom-
mending an imn\ediaie 10 percent cut in personal income tax
rates, the first installment of a 30 percent reduction over three
years, as specified in the Kemp-Roih bill. He will surely include in
the package other proposals to redu<^ taxes on business.

It seems probable that Congress, already prepared to cut taxes
on its own by some S39 billion In fiscal 19S1, would go along with
the first-year part of the Reagan plan. But thereafter Reagan is
likely to have a much harder row to hoe with Congress on both
taxes and spending, not only because Democrats will still be in the
majority in the House but also because proposed spending cuts
are bound to provoke strong opposition from particular constitu-
encies. Furthermore, excessive tax cutting, leading to worse
budget deficits, would probably be resisted by Congress as infia-
tlonary.

To be sure, Reagan himself is no inflationist. The strongest
single economic plank in the Reagan-dominated Republican
Party platform was its denunciation of inflation and its attack on
President Carter for aggravating inflation during his four-year
term. Reagan could adduce ample justification of modifying the
tax and spending components of bis program, should these later
be found to conflict with the objectives of balancing the budget
and checking inflation.

Pragmatism — defined as a willingness to depart from an
earlier course, as required by political circumstances — is a well-
established Reagan trait. As Governor of California, not only did
he more than double slate expenditures, as we have noted, but he
presided over three major tax increases. These were large enough,
however, to yield budget surpluses, and he gave back part of the
surpluses through tax reductions and rebates. John Schmitz, a

OH'mESUm.YSlDE

whether it would cure or worsen inflation. Earlier Reagan enter-
tained the idea of trying to solve the inflation problem by return-
ing to the gold standard, but such advisers as George Shultz, Alan
Greenspan, and Milton Friedman appear to have convinced him
that the idea is far too risky. Inflation at a fairly high rate, at least,
appears to lie ahead. Indeed, Reagan's fiscal plan depends on ac-
cepting a fairly high rate of inflation — in the 8 to 10 percent
range — to achieve the tax cuts and budget balance be seeks. He is
bound to have great difilculty in gelling the “comprehensive” pro-
gram be wants through Congress and through the resistances of
various interest groups in the four years ahead.

Post-election realism will probably force President Reagan
and bis close aides to adjust their program — which has served its
essential purpose of selling the Republican Party’s candidate to
the nation — to less risky proportions. If the program is not
trimmed, especially in the huge tax cuts it has advertised, the na-
lion may be in for an exciting adventure in economic policy-mak-
ing — with a markedly diminished role for the Federal govern-
ment, and a seriously worsened budgetary and inflationary
problem.

Free Trader

Leonard Silk

Ronald Reagan’s overall approach to international economic
policy is an extension of his domestic economic philosophy. That
is: an aversion to government interference with free private enter-
prise and free markets. Thus, he favors free trade as a way to pro-
vide greater opportunities for American business abroad, benefits
for consumers at home, and a check to inflation.

But Reagan is also a praciicaJ poUticiaa who is likely to be re-
sponsive to pressure groups making a strong and insistent case
that they are being injured by free trade and foreign competition.
The likelihood is that, in a crunch, Reagan’s political pragmatism
would win out over his free-trade ideology. He has already
hedged his position carefully. When asked whether he would im-
pose limits on the importation of such goods as automobiles and
steel that are blamed for causing unemployment in the United
Slates, be said; “I would not want to resort to protectionism. That
kind of protectionism leads to retaliation. But I think the Presi-
dent could tell other countries, ’Look, we believe in free trade; but
we also believe in fair trade. Now, you've got to play the game

FREETRADER

indusiry and the United Auto Workers to restrict imports of for-
cigo — especially Japanese — cars and trucks, Reagan during the
campaign reiterated his opposition to quotas on imports, declar*
ing, “By inducing retaliation by our trade partners, quotas could
deprive American workers of valuable foreign markets and re-
duce, rather than increase, demand for American-made cars.’'

He did not, however, reject the idea of some help to the
American auto industry. He proposed a moratorium on future
regulations and a review of existing regulations on autos, new tax
breaks to encourage retooling for the production of small cars,
and repeal of Federal gasoline allocation rules which, he contend-
ed, have in the past led to gasoline tines and a drop in the demand
for U-S. autos.

The growth of iniemaiional trade since World War II, says
Reagan, has helped to improve the living standards of all the trad-
ing partners. “One of the best ways to promote economic growth
in the future,” be adds, “is to continue to expand our trade with
other nations.” He emphasizes that American exports provide
one-sixth of all private-sector jobs in the United States. He means
to safeguard or expand the number of those jobs, not by excluding
imports, but by increasing American access to foreign markets. He
inveighs against countries that “impose barriers to our exports and
unfairly subsidize their own industries,” and has promised to
work to prevent such unfair trade practices from penalizing
American producers. But he believes it “far better serves our own
interests, and those of the world, to aggressively pursue a reduc-
tion in foreign nations’ trade barriers rather than to erect more
barriers of our own.”

Reagan has committed himself to a policy of vigorous export
promotion. As President, he means to press foreign leaders to
open their countries up more freely to American goods. “In my
meetings with other heads of state,” he has said, “I would be a
strong advocate for the sale of our commodities in foreign coun-
tries, giving those trade questions the kind of direct personal presi-
dential thrust they deserve.” Reagan urges commodity producers
across the United States to leam from “the excellent example of

FREETRADER

sioD, iaflalion, and balance-of-payments weakness, all of which
have been inteastfied by the chronic squeeze on oil supplies and
prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Holdmg the fort against such powerful impulses toward protec-
tionism will be one of the great tasks facing President Reagan.

If the Reagan administration is to hold to liberal trade poli-
cies, it will have to pursue domestic policies for spurring economic
growth, both at home and internationally. Reagan's support for
free trade is therefore closely linked to his proposed “supply-side”
tax cuts for increasing incentives and productivity and for raising
the level of national savings and investment.

The United States emerged from World War II as the strong-
est economy in the world by far and the national leader of the
non-Communist nations. It assumed the mission of helping its
war-damaged allies, as well as it enemies, Japan and Germany, to
rebuild their shattered econonxies. This mission was considered
not one of pure altruism but of enlightened self-interest. But what
went wrong? Why did the United States lose ground, as other
countries strengthened?

One major reason is that stronger investment efforts enabled
the industrial countries, especially Japan and West Germany, to
achieve greater technological progress than the United States.
Since 1960, domestic investment as a percentage of gross national
product ran at annual rates of only 16 to 18 percent in the United
States compared with 32 to 34 percent in Japan and 22 percent to
27 percent in West Germany. Indeed, the United States fer the
past two decades has had the lowest domestic investment rate of
any major industrial nation.

The Reagan fiscal poU^ is designed to change that situation,
and thereby to restore the productivity and competitiveness of
United States industry in the world economy. Hence, confronted
by sharp criticism of many traditionally conservative economists
of his tax proposals, which they warned would exacerbate infla-
tion, Reagan has not wavered from his support of the Kemp- Roth
bill to reduce Federal income taxes by 30 percent during the flrst
three years of his admioistratioa. In addition, be means to press

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

Congress to provide other tax cuts for business, especially faster
write-offs of investment in new plant, equipment and motor vehi--
cles.

But Reagan hopes to combine such fiscal stimulus, urged by
the “supply-siders” in his camp, such as Representative Jack
Kemp of upstate New York, Senator William V, Roth, Jr., of
Delaware, and Professor Arthur Laffer of the University of South-
ern California, with the more cautious fiscal and monetary ap-
proach of such Republican economic stalwarts as Alan Green-
span, George P. Shultz, Arthur F. Burns, and — perhaps most in-
fluential of all — Professor Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate.
In giving the top policy role to this latter group, the “old guard,”
however, Reagan has still insisted that fiscal and monetary cau-
tion be combined with the stimulus preached by his “supply-
siders” or “populists.”

Reagan’s two sets of economic advisers, the old guard and the
populists, differ not only on domestic but on international mone-
tary policy. The populists favor a return to the gold standard, with
fixed exchange rates between the dollar (and other currencies) and
gold, while the old guard warns that such a return to the gold
standard would be extremely hazardous in the present worldwide
inflationary environment.

Asked in the spring of 1980 whether he was seriously consid-
ering a return to the gold standard, Reagan replied: “Yes, I know
it would be complicated to go back to a gold standard as such, but
I am looking at a de facto gold standard. Suppose the United
States set a date and said we are going to mint a coin based on the '
value of gold at that time. Once people realized they could take
paper dollars and buy a gold coin of the same face value, they
probably wouldn’t bother to, and it would stabilize the value of
the dollar.” This Reagan reasoning was apparently picked up
from a memo by Professor Laffer. As an ex-actor, Reagan seems
inclined to reel off scripts that have been given to him and that he
has learned, but frequently appears not to have gone in with un-
derstanding beyond the words of the script.

FREETRADER

Until late in the 1980 political campaign, Reagan unquestion-
ably still was satisfied to go along with those economic advisers
who had been calling for a return to the gold standard. He accept-
ed, though without fully committing himself, their contention that
the return to gold would bring stability to the international mone-
tary system and would help stop innation at home. As George
Shultz, a champion of flexible exchange rates — indeed, it was he
who negotiated them during the Nixon administration — agrees,
Reagan remains seriously interested in the possibility of an even-
tual return to gold. The conservative economists of the old guard,
such as Shultz, who strongly favored flexible exchange rates, ap-
parently succeeded in convincing Reagan that since Americans
could buy and sell gold freely, and since gold owners, public or
private, were free to turn gold into coins, in effect we were already
close to being back on a gold standard. Meanwhile, it would be
too risky to try to formalize a fixed-race exchange system.

Reagan’s support for gold found its way into the Republican
Party platform, in a clause adopted unanimously by the twenty-
ftve-member subcommittee on flscal and monetary affairs chaired
by Senator Roth. Although the clause did not mention the word
“gold,” it might well have, since it declared: “The severing of the
dollar’s link with real commodities in the 1960s and 1970s, in
order to pursue economic goals other than dollar stability, has un-
leashed hyperinflationary forces at home and monetary disorder
abroad, without bringing any of the desired economic benefits.
One of the most urgent economic tasks in the period ahead will be
the restoration of the dependable monetary standard — that is, an
end to inflation.”

However, in the final phase of the election campaign, Reagan
dowmplayed his commitment to a return to the gold standard. He
seemingly accepted the logic of Greenspan, Shultz, and Friedman
that it would be too risky to "put the cart before the horse” by
trying to impose a gold standard and fixed rales of exchange upon
ihe United Slates and other naitoas before world price stability
had been achieved. The old guard contended that fixing the dollar
at loo high a price in terms of gold would make American goods

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

uncompetitive in world markets while setting the dollar’s rate too
low would result in a massive outflow of United States gold; and
possibly, as Greenspan warned, “the loss of all the gold in Fort
Knox overnight.” The result of such warnings appears to have
been a cooling of Reagan’s zeal for an early return to gold, but
without dissuading him of its ultimate desirability. It now seems
highly improbable that Reagan as President would press for going
back to the gold standard, as long as his top advisers include such
men as Greenspan, Shultz, and Friedman.

Reagan’s elevation of old guard economists to the primary
role in his administration, together with his choice of George
Bush, the moderate Republican (earlier denounced by Reagan
supporters as a representative of the “Eastern Liberal Establish-
ment”) suggests that Reagan means to be pragmatic and to play
“coalition politics” in the White House, while seeking to retain the
support of Republican right-wingers, many of whom ardently de-
sire a return to the gold standard.

But he now seems certain to avoid precipitating action on gold
that might produce a crisis for the dollar and the world monetary
system. He would face grave difficulties in persuading other coun-
tries to go along with any plan to rigidly fix exchange rates. As Dr.
Otmar Emminger, the former president of the West German
Bunderfaank, has observed, floating exchange rates — rates that
are free to move up and down with the supply and demand for
currencies — have permitted the growth in world trade, despite
worldwide inflationary disorder and the energy crisis. Floating
rates have helped to curb protectionism and have enabled several
major countries to eliminate capital controls. These are all goals
that Reagan himself favors. In addition, Emminger notes, where
attempts have been made to stabilize exchange rates with diver-
gent inflation rates, as in the case of the European Monetary Sys-
tem, inflation has been worsened, with the high rates of price in-
crease in some countries transmitted to countries with lower rates
of inflation. The reason is that the flight of money from high-
inflation to low-inflation countries tends to expand the money
supply in the low-inflation countries and thereby drives up prices.

FREETRADER

Opposition nowadays to fixed exchange rates, which is the
real meaning and core of a gold standard, is by no means only a
conservative view of economists such as Oimar Emmingcr or Mil-
ton Friedman, but is a position just as strongly held by such lib-
eral economists as Professor Paul A. Samuelson, another Nobel
Prize winner. Professor James Tobin, and other leading economic
advisers to Democratic administrations.

The Reagan administration's foreign economic policy will be
closely linked to its foreign policy and national security objectives.
Reagan seems more determined than President Carter was to put
greater pressure on members of OPEC to moderate their price ac-
tions and to invest their surplus earnings in (he poor oil-importing
countries of the Third World, if they arc to expect continued
United States economic, technical, and military support. He is
also likely to be more aggressive in pressing Europe and Japan for
their backing of a more determined United States effort to insure
Western access to energy supplies in the Middle East and other
OPEC countries.

The United States' allies might regard a more aggressive Rea-
gan foreign and economic policy as excessively nationalisUc and
potentially dangerous to their own interests. The problem facing
President Reagan will be to reconstruct a more forceful United
States foreign economic and defense policy that will avoid shock-
ing the Western alliance into still worse disarray.

Both by the evidence of his own public remarks and the judg-
ment of advisers who have worked closely with him, Ronald Rea-
gan lacks depth or detailed knowledge of economic affairs. How-
ever, his record as Governor of California suggests that he will be
willing to appoint competent officers and give them the scope and
authority to get the job done. It is therefore important, in trying to
assess the likely economic policies of a Reagan administration, to
go beyond Reagan’s own statements to those of his key advisers.
That task has been facilitated by the publication by the Hoover
Institution of a thick volume, “The United States in the 1980s,” to

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

which twenty-three experts, many of whom are likely to serve the
Reagan adnunistration, contributed.

The principal chapter on foreign economic policy, written by
Professor G. M. Meier of Stanford University, stresses that Ameri-
can foreign economic policy must foster trade liberalization, pro-
mote guidelines for exchange-rate intervention by national gov-
ernments, strengthen the role of private international finance, and
expand opportunities for the exports of developing countries.

The United States is urged to pursue close policy coordination
with Europe, Japan, and the newly industrialized countries, and
must operate in the context of a multipolar power structure. For-
eign economic policy cannot avoid being shaped by the state of
the domestic economy. Professor Meier observes, for unless infla-
tion and unemployment can be lessened, pressures will mount for
controls over foreign trade and capital movements. But, converse-
ly, an open and competitive world economy can contribute much
to domestic economic expansion. Reagan appears to have taken
that lesson to heart.

The disarray of the international economy has already had
adverse effects on the United States economy, and the new Rea-
gan administration will have to strive to pursue domestic eco-
nomic goals of full employment and economic stability without
external imbalance. Unfortunately, that goal today seems 'more
distant than it was a decade ago. The temptations are greater —
and stiU more dangerous — to resort to defensive economic na-
tionalism, or an East-West or North-South confrontation.

Professor Meier warns that there is always the danger that the
regulation of international economic conduct will be abandoned
either to simple unilateral action or to tests of bargaining power
between nations. To avoid the dangers of nationalism and policy
competition among nations, he urges better policy coordination.
“In the last analysis,” he concludes, “not American foreign eco-
nomic policy alone but policy coordination and supranational
decision units will be required to reduce the tensions and conflicts.
... In this wider approach to policymaking, more progress can

FREETRADER

be made toward mtemational deregulation and the greater em-
ployment of full and efficient use of global resources.”

Increasing the supply and use of resources, both human and
material, will be essential in the years ahead to prevent inflation

— without resorting to the periodic spells of economic slump and
high unemployment. In an increasingly closely integrated world
economy, such policies for growth will have to be international in
scope, for a single nation — even one as huge as the United States

— that presses for expansion alone might wreck its balance of
payments and currency, and thereby worsen its inflation.

But can the United States and its partners learn to work to-
gether in a way that is mutually beneficial, or will nation after na-
tion be driven to adopt protectionist policies, ultimately causing
the world economy to stagnate and disintegrate, as happened in
the 1930s — with devastaung consequences for world peace? That
is the Ufe-and-death issue that confronts President Reagan and his
new administration.

Reagan's commitment to increasing United States defense
capabilities is presented by his foreign policy advisers not as a
burden to the American economic performance but as a means of
strengthening the United States economic role abroad. They con-
tend that, unless the credibility of the United States as a powerful
military ally, especially vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, is enhanced,
countries in Western Europe and Asia will be progressively less
willing to agree to economic and other concessions, to liberalize
trade further, or to follow the United States’ lead in demanding
reliable access to supplies of energy and raw materials. Lacking
belief in American political and military power, according to the
Reagan camp’s view, other countries would be reluctant to share
the cost of collective defense and to regulate economic relations
with the Communist and developing countries on a common basis
with the United States.

There is no question that Reagan gives paramount emphasis
to strengthening the United States militarily, and shows no evi-
dence of concern that high and rapidly rising defense expenditures

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

could weaken the American economic performance, by diverting
resources from civilian uses, where they might strengthen Ameri-
can productivity, to nlilitary uses, which could exacerbate infla-
tionary pressures.

The efforts of a Reagan administration to intensify United
States and allied pressures on Communist, oil-producing, and
Third World countries could risk' worsening U.S. relations not
only with those blocs but also with Western Europe and Japan.
Unless handled with remarkable skill, the United States’ allies
might regard a more aggressive Reagan foreign and economic
policy as excessively national.

Arms and the Man

Richard Burt

It wfts only ten o’clock in the morning, but (he senior aide in
Jimmy Carter’s While House stumped down in his chair, tired and
depressed. The date was April 25, 1980, and only three hours
earlier, the President had made a brief announcement telling the
nation that a daring mission to send Army commandos into Tehe-
ran to rescue fifty-three American hostages bad ended in tragic
failure somewhere in the Iranian desert. Many of the details sur-
rounding the fiasco were still unclear, and the public had yet to
view the scenes of the charred and twisted wreckage of American
helicopters on the T.V. news. Nevertheless, the weary White
House official expressed few doubts over what the political impact
of the abortive rescue mission would be. “National defense has
emerged as a bigger issue in 1980 than any campaign in recent his-
tory, with Ronald Reagan and the other Republicans arguing that
we have become a second-rate power. The rescue mission is going
to convince a lot of folks that Reagan is right.”

Serea montbs later, ibe White House aide's pcedictioa was
borne out at the polls. And as he and his colleagues began updat-

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

ing their job resumes, a new team of national security specialists
prepared to enter the government, all dedicated to restoring “a
margin of safety” to the country’s defenses. At the Pentagon, there
was undisguised jubilation among ranking military officers, who
had let it be known during the campaign that they were disturbed
about the state of American military readiness. On Wall Street,
meanwhile, Reagan’s victory resulted in a surge in the prices of
aircraft and other defense-related stocks.

With hindsight, the election capped off a decade-long shift in
public opinion toward defense spending and American military
power. In the early 1970s, with the United States engaged in the
painful process of disengaging from the Vietnam War, the defense
budget declined for the first time since the 1950s. President Gerald
Ford’s budget projections in 1976 called for large increases in
militar y spending, but the voters chose Jimmy Carter, who had
campaigned on the promise of slashing the Pentagon budget by at
least S5 bUlion, a pledge he was never able to carry out, Reagan,
on the other hand, campaigned hard on the theme of rebuilding
the American military and was the beneficiary of a new national
mood that was shaped not by Vietnam, but by the hostage crisis in
Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and turbulence in central
America.

In contrast to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan is clearly com-
fortable with military power. A veteran of World War II (he
worked with the Culver City Commandos, the first motion picture
unit of the Army Air Corps), Reagan believes, like many in his
generation, that military strength is a prerequisite for peace. Hit-
ler, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, North Korea’s invasion
of the south, aU of these could have been avoided had the United
States and its allies kept their defenses m good order. Thus, there
is little of the ambivalence about American military power that
grew up during the Vietnam era and seemed to inform Jimmy
Carter’s view of the world. A nuclear submariner. Carter com-
bined an engineering approach to military problems with an al-
most religious zeal for limiting the arms race with Moscow
through negotiation. Reagan, on the other hand, is said by close

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

clear weapons to kill millions of Americans and Russians, the
United States should aim at military targets in the Soviet Union in
time of war, not civilians.

9 Soviet military gains in Afghanistan, or tor that matter, in
Eastern Europe, should not be accepted “as a permanent histori-
cal fact,” according to the paper.

^ Although the United States, on occasions, must depend on
the military capabilities of allied countries to deter the Soviets,
“the availability of allied support should not constrain American
action in defense of its interests.”

These are general guidelines, and it will take a few years to see
whether a Reagan administration has made any progress in apply-
ing them. In the meantime, Reagan and his defense team will con-
front a host of more pressing, concrete military issues. Easily the
most controversial (and costly) defense decision taken by Jimmy
Carter was his approval of the MX mobile missile. Under the Car-
ter plan, some 200 of the huge rockets, each equipped with ten
multiple nuclear warheads, would be moved on giant trucks along
a maze of roads to be built in remote sections of Utah and Neva-
da. Interspersed along the roads would be 400 to 500 concrete
shelters that could be used to fire the missiles. With each of the
200 MX missiles either on the move or hidden within one of the
concrete shelters, Moscow would be unable to pinpoint the loca-
tion of the entire missile force and would thus be frustrated, in
any crisis, from attempting a “first strike” attack. The Air Force
wants to begin deploying the first MX missile by 1986, but the sys-
tem is already under heavy attack from experts who claim it is un-
workable as well as from local residents in Utah and Nevada who
worry about its impact on the environment.

Van Cleave and other senior Reagan defense aides fully sup-
port a program for building the new MX missile, particularly be-
cause the warheads aboard the rocket would be accurate enough
to destroy Soviet land-based missiles. But they assert that the Air
Force’s existing system of Minuteman missiles is already vulner-
able to attack and thus the United States cannot wait until the end
of the decade for the MX to be deployed.

arms AND THE MAN

a boo. pubUshad las,

Hgftto: mat Can Ba Dona. Van C'“«= “ ,1^^, ..„y,ctiva

son, another Reagan defense a vise . „ycraUSovielstrate-

analyses show clearly .ha. by the early 1980s,ov™

gic nuclear force capabib.ies ^ , analyses show

llniled S.a.es. Of even grea.er a abiU.y .o figh.,

a subslanlial dispanly m favor “f " consequenlly, .he

survive, win, and recover from n^lear wa ^
audtors advocaled a series of “qmclc fia«

more-vulnerable s.ralegic arsenal. Thompson

Many of the ideas propose y actively dis-

have been blessed by '^'“Sa" ^^,ad wish .he MX,

cussed wi.hm .he Pentagon. putting a few hnn-

dte Air Force is a„ missiles on .mcks and

dred of the Air Force's eaistingM.""!'."

moving them around a s'"“ ° “ , sub-launched rockets)
about the growing vulnerability ( . . ^ gioog the East and

of the Air Force’s B-52 bombers a „i,yn ,he

West coasts, proposals for rnoving P ^ number of

nation’s interior ate also being ‘ - air-launched cruise

schemes for increasing the productio tomber. and build-

missUcs, starting a program for a new j^ilitary installations

ing antiballistic missile sites aroundj >

around the country, such as missi e a ground forces, t e

In the area of conventional ’ called one-and-a-half

Reagan experts have taken aim oii . Nixon and perpe
war strategy adopted a decade ago f United States

uated by Jimmy Carter. Under re a f""'"^'' “Jj.

required to possess suffictent o troops for a s

met with the Soviet Union in E"™P' “IT World. But the Rca_
cr, “brush fire” war S'”"'*''"' “ . um,ed States could fin

gan team believes that in the 19 s, simultaneously

Leif fighting wars in a number “'"““homeintheCanb-

rope, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, an Reagan ’

bean and Central America. Aecotdmg and 1

such as Ray Klein of the Georgetown Center

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

temational Studies in Washington, have called for an expanded
system of Western alliances, including NATO, the Far East, Aus-
tralia, and others, which would give Washington and like-minded
nations the ability to cope with military threats on a global front.

Such an alliance is a long way off, and in the short run Rea-
gan and his advisers have stressed that the United States bears the
primary responsibility for keeping the peace, particularly in vola-
tile Third World regions. Thus, they are highly critical of Carter’s
decision to base a rapid deployment force for use in the Third
World on existing forces, arguing that this is merely an exercise in
“robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Instead, in a report prepared for
Reagan last summer, a Republican task force concluded that a
massive increase in conventional strength was necessary to enable
the United States “to be able to confront the new and greatly ex-
panded Soviet ability to launch forces in important areas not now
defended by the United States and its allies.”

The task force, headed by retired General Edward Rowny, a
former military representative in arms talks with Moscow, said
that the nation needed 200 additional warships, five new Army
divisions, and nine more tactical air squadrons. The report did not
say how much these additional forces would cost, but a similar
study prepared in 1^79 by the Committee for the Present Danger,
a private group with close l ink s to Reagan, said that over the next
five years, the Pentagon would need S200 billion more than
spending estimates approved by the Carter administration.

The question, of course, is where the money for new strategic
and conventional forces will come from. The Reagan team’s sensi-
tivity to this question was illustrated toward the end of the cam-
paign when Van Cleave told reporters that the government had to
consider the possibility of spending as much as 7 percent of the
country’s gross national product for defense. (A little less than 5
percent of the GNP now goes for defense.) When told about Van
Cleave’s remark, William Casey, Reagan’s campaign chairman,
quickly announced that he was not speaking for Reagan. But most
^taiy specialists around Reagan privately acknowledge that
Van Cleave is probably right; in order to meet the miUtary goals

ARMS AND THE MAN

Spelled out in the campaign, it will be necessary to up the defense
budgets by tens of billions of dollar in future years.

One clear obstacle to boosting the defense budget is the deter-
mination of Reagan’s economic advisers to bring government
spending under control. Although men like Caspar Weinberger
and William Simon have said that military spending must in-
crease, there is almost certainly a gap between how they thinV the
nation can afford it and the figures thought necessary by Reagan’s
defense team. Political realities must also be taken into account: as
much as the conservatives around Reagan would like to cut back
government’s role in providing educational, health, and other
services, the most pragmatic of them admit that the best that can
probably be done is to limit further spending iiicreises.

But even if the economic advisers are able to come up with a
magic formula that would permit military spending to rise sub-
stantially, any new resources for defense will most likely have to
go for manpower rather than new weapons and new units. This is
because, by most accounts, the country’s all-volunteer armed
forces are failing. Instituted by Richard Nixon in the last days of
the Vietnam War, the all-volunteer system is now faced with a
number of seemingly insoluble problems. In the active forces, the
problem is one of quality, and it is getting worse: in 1975, Army
statistics show that 32 percent of new volunteers were below the
national average in mental ability; in 1979, almost 60 percent were
in this category. In the reserve forces, the problem is one of re-
cruitment: the existing strength of the nation’s Ready Reserve is
less than 400.000, about 275,000 short of the number that Con-
gress has approved and the Pentagon says it needs.

If the problem of recruiting people to the armed services is
serious, the problem of retaining them is even worse. In the Ma-
rine Corps, for example, less than 10 percent of recruits now sign
on for another tour. The Navy, meanwhile, says it needs more
than 20,000 experienced chief petty officers and only has 65 per-
cent of the number of pilots ft requires for its aircraft carriers.

The Republicans are not oblivious to this situation, and Sena-
tor John Tower, the new chairman of the Armed Services Com-

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

mittee, told a press conference in November that dealing with the
manpower dilemma would be his “first priority,” The answer is
simple: money. General Rowny, in a report for Reagan during the
campaign, urged a 17 percent pay increase for officers and en-
listed men alike. He also called on Reagan to reinstitute the
educational benefits contained in the G.I. Bill and said that mili-
tary pay should be indexed so that, for example, if prices went up
by 10 percent, military salaries would rise by the same amount.

The problem of sorting out military priorities between man-
power and additional forces is clearly a difficult one. But even if
Reagan and his defense advisers are able to find a balance, they
must still face other excruciating choices. One of the most difficult
is whether, in buying new forces, the Pentagon should emphasize
nuclear or conventional weapons. In the 1950s, the Eisenhower
administration, operating under the philosophy of buying “more
bang for the buck,” opted for building up the country’s nuclear ar-
senal. During the Kennedy period, this strategy was reversed, and
under the “flexible response” doctrine the Pentagon was ordered
to build up conventional defenses.

In much the same way, the Carter administration emphasized
the importance of non-nuclear forces and launched a drive in
1977, to improve land and air forces in Western Europe. Now, a
Reagan administration must decide where to set its priorities.
Some Reagan military thinkers, such as Van Cleave, have stressed
nuclear improvements in order to reduce the potential vulnerabil-
ity of missiles and bombers to surprise attack. At the same time,
however, Moscow’s growing capacity to threaten vital regions,
such as the Persian Gulf, has led others, like General Rowny, to
emphasize the need for additional land, sea, and air units. In the
area of conventional forces, moreover, there are other choices. Al-
though the major thrust behind the Carter defense program was
strengthening NATO, some Republican defense thinkers believe
that this emphasis was misplaced. For a start, they contend that
the alhed governments of Western Europe, together with Japan,
must be prodded to take on a larger burden for their own defense.
Speaking to an enthusiastic group on Capitol Hill just after Rea-

ARMS AND THE MAN

gan’s election, Alexander Haig, ihe former NATO commander,
said that Japan and Western Europe no longer suffered from war-
tom economies and “they are competing with us for markets at
home and abroad."

At the same time, Reagat), like many of his new team, is a
Catifomian and docs not have close ties to such institutions of the
East Coast “foreign policy establishment" as the Council on For-
eign Relations in New York or Harvard or Yale universities.
Thus, rather than focusing on Western Europe as the linchpin of
American diplomacy, there are signs that Reagan is less con-
cerned about NATO and more sensitive to security issues in other
parts of the world — in the Persian Gulf, East Asia, and Latin
America. This could mean that Reagan would be much more in-
clined to spend extra defense funds on the Navy, the most visible
form of American power in the Third World, rather than on the
Army, which has the major role of defending Europe.

Less clear is how Reagan and his top aides would approach
the more subtle and frustrating problem of getting the most out of
the defense dollar. Jeffrey Record, a former aide to Senator Sam
Nunn and a Reagan defense adviser during the campaign, has
argued that the Iranian rescue fiasco offered vivid testimony to
the fact that “the United States has fumbled every significant mili-
tary venture it has undertaken in the last twenty years." Record
and other Reagan advisers maintain that the defense dilemmas
facing the country are not just the product of funding shortages,
but stem from deep-seated problems within the American military
itself. Like other large-scale American enterprises, be it the Chrys-
ler Corporation or Lockheed, the Defense Department, they con-
tend, has become a bureaucratic monster in which inertia and
inefTiciency, rather than innovation and accountability, character-
ize its day-to-day operations.

Jimmy Carter's “zero-based budgeting” was meant, four years
ago, to force the Pentagon to review whether the roles and mis-
sions of the four services were relevant to a new military era. In
retrospect, many senior defense officials believe that this effort
failed. “Our strategy and tacUcs arc still back in the 1950s,” said

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

one Carter appointee, who asserted that bureaucratic reforms
within the military were more important to improved combat
capability than any budgetary increases. A report prepared for
Reagan by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in
Washington, struck a similar theme, saying there were “some pro-
foimd doubts as to the soundness of the present structure of U.S.
forces — their styles of deployment, their methods of warfare and
their equipment preferences.” But Reagan may have even greater
difficulty than Carter in promoting organizational reforms in the
Pentagon. He is said by his closest associates to have little desire
to second-guess the military and is thus more inclined to let senior
officers, rather than civilian specialists, decide what kind of forces
the country needs to buy.

Beyond these issues is the much more sensitive question of
Reagan’s propensity to use military force in foreign crises. Reagan
is said by his friends to believe that to deter war, the United States
not only needs adequate military forces but must also demonstrate
the willingness to use them. During the Carter period, he is also
known to have frequently complained to associates that the Geor-
gian suffered from “a failure of nerve” in dealing with aggression
and international terrorism abroad. In the final analysis, however,
Reagan has virtually no experience in having to weigh the ex-
cruciating pros and cons of ordering American troops into action;
California, after all, does not have a foreign policy nor a military
establishment. Reagan’s closest friends maintain that in .tense
situations, he is anything but “trigger happy,” preferring concilia-
tion over confrontation. But they also report that there is a point
beyond which he will not allow himself to be pushed. So Reagan’s
propensity to use mihtary force rem ains very much a mystery,
probably the most important mystery confronting the nation and
the world.

Reagan's World

Hedrick Smith

Not since (he 1960 campaign of John F. Kennedy has an Ameri-
can presidential candidate ridden into office sounding the alarm
that the United States has fallen perilously behind Russia in the
arms competition. Not since the late Secretary of State John Fos-
ter Dulles has so powerful an American leader issued the warning
that the United Stales “has been sleepwalking too long” and must
now “snap out of it” to engage anew in the global cold war.

And yet whatever themes of Kennedy and Dulles two decades
ago now echo in Ronald Reagan, the irony is that in the White
House, the former Governor of California may emerge more as a
natural counterpart to Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev than
as a lineal descendant of any single American leader.

For Brezhnev is a personally cordial, congenial consensus-
maker who climbed to power in the provinces before ruling the
KremUn, and he has presided over the most determined, costly,
and successful buildup of armed strength in Russian history. Now
comes Ronald Reagan, another genial, affable politician whose
roots are in the midland and whose route to power has been

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

through distant California, and he, too, has proclaimed his dedi-
cation to a massive new American military thrust that will “re-
store the margin of safety” for the Free World.

Obviously, there are important differences between these
ideological adversaries. But there are also intriguing parallels.
Like Brezhnev, Reagan enters upon national leadership as a poli-
tician whose primary concern has been domestic affairs and who
is not broadly tutored in foreign policy. In the early 1970s, Presi-
dent Nixon sent then-Govemor Reagan on goodwill tours to the
Far East and Europe, just as Brezhnev was called on for cere-
monial diplomatic chores before assuming real power.

Reagan has visited more than twenty countries and met such
leaders as West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, French
President Giscard d’Estaing, and British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher. But after he won the Republican nomination last July,
Reagan decided against a trip to Europe on grounds that it would
take too long for him to prepare himself and because it would
seem an artificial effort to make him look expert in a field where
he was still an amateur. Earlier, in a television interview, be had
seemed to betray a surprising gap of knowledge when he did not
quickly recognize the name of the President of France. Jimmy
Carter mocked Reagan with the taunt that if the Republican were
elected, participants in summit meetings would have to w'ear
name tags for his benefit.

Reagan’s inexperience brings to mind the stiff awkwardness of
Brezhnev encountered by European leaders a decade ago. After
the late French President Georges Pompidou and West German
Chancellor Willy Brandt held their first meetings with Brezhnev,
it was whispered about that the Soviet leader w'as so insecure in
diplomatic affairs that he rigidly read the script of his briefing
papers and, in response to questions, resorted to w'hat were evi-
dently carefully rehearsed answers. Westerners complained that
Brezhnev himself was too inadequately informed to sustain a
genuine dialogue, an impression that has faded in the intervening
years.

Bom a few years apart in the early years of the twentieth cen-

REAOAirS WORLD

f their world outlook many

tury, Brezhnev , doctrines have been little modi-

yeats ago and their Each talks in the tongue of

fled by the changing tides of ^ E homeland and its

the trie beUever, wUh suspicion toward the

historic mission m the wori ideological enemies. To hear

blutfmg and devious '““S' ^e foe! to hear Brezhnev, it is

Reagan, Communism IS the. mlda^bUt^^.^ ^

capitalism. a"** adversaries, patriots and

Xe terms. It is a “ „hy enemies. It is a world

villains, loyal friends and untra I ^ ^^„eties or shadings of
where complex power „hcre the vibrant nation-

neutrality are often lost or f“rg poorly understood.

alism of many other peoples IS dim^y pragmatic.

In practice, however, both Brezhnev marched

more toible than their 'b'’”"' "“he felt vital Soviet inter-
Soviet troops into C^choslovakia ^ ___ ^ „, 3 , caus^

ests were at stake and into AfS"'"' “ power-conservatism

i, seemed a safe bet. .'^'‘Icmess and let proxies fight

of the Soviet elders who disdain reck ^^^iously than he

1st of their battles, he ';ay«'X:.hen confrontation with

sounded on other occasions P ^

Washington loomed. untested as a leader of B

likewise though Reagan is urn ,. m as Oovemor of Cali

In his inexperience readiness to go to

has sometimes exhibite I power over w ually

confiict with the Rf-^^^Vut he has often '0“^ ^

Ihe moment as crucial jot him too far out o

when his own impulsive

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

The closer his political path brought him to the White House,
the more narrowly he defined the perimeter of vital American in-
terests. And the more eager he was to assert that he is at heart a
man of peace “not trigger happy . . . not warmongering” and not
itching for a showdown. For in his campaign for the Presidency,
Ronald Reagan fashioned a rhetoric of implied force that is not
only fervent in its insistence on greater military power but also
vague as to how he would employ his power as President.

In short, there are two Reagans and the tensions between them
seem almost inevitably to foreshadow differences within the new
administration and to arouse conflicting passions in Congress and
among the public at large. Just as in the Carter administration,
these conflicting presidential impulses are likely to produce shifts
and lurches and inconsistencies of policy that will bedevil friend
and foe alike. They make Reagan’s choice of senior defense and
diplomatic advisers crucial to the course of American foreign
policy over the next four years, for those who are the closest and
most trusted will have great influence on which of the two Rea-
gans is dominant at critical moments of decision.

One Reagan is the rhetorical right-winger who instinctively
voices wide popular disenchantment with post-war American di-
plomacy, who conveys the sense that the world is a dangerous and
inhospitable place and utters resentment that America has re-
treated in the face of Soviet advances. This is the Reagan of con-
frontation. This Reagan strikes a responsive chord when, his voice
thickening with patriotic passion, he declares, “No more Viet-
nams, no more Taiwans,” or when he suggests periodically it is
time to strike back to demonstrate that America has not become
what Richard Nixon once called “a pitiful, helpless giant.” This is
the politician who picked hawkish foreign poUcy advisers for his
campaign.

The other Reagan is the pragmatic practitioner of power. His
statements are more circumspect, his language more carefully am-
biguous and qualified. If the right-wing Reagan urges a blockade
of Cuba, the pragmatic Reagan shrewdly refuses to be lured into
advocating American intervention in Iran. “I am not going to rush

REAGANS WORLD

out and wave a blood-soaked sword and yell, ‘Onward men/ and
I don’t think it’s necessary,” the pragmatic Reagan remarked last
summer. “You use whatever force is necessary to achieve the pur-
pose, and 1 would like to feel that there wouldn’t be a need for
using armed force if we made it apparent that we have the will, if
necessary, to do that.” This is the Reagan of accommodation, who
talks of a “reasonable and balanced” relationship with Russia.
This Reagan leans for advice on experienced, prudent conserva-
tives like former Treasury Secretary George Shultz, a man with
ties to European leaders and the world of international trade and
finance.

But whichever side of Reagan prevails at any given moment,
the new President approaches the world with a basic philosophical
outlook which is a throwback to the 1950s when American power
was paramount and which may founder on the more complex
realities of the 1980s. His is the bipolar world of the early Cold
War. For Ronald Reagan, much more than for other recent
American Presidents, the global power rivalry with Moscow not
only animates his thinking about foreign affairs but to a great de-
gree it is the prism through which he views the entire world. Both
intellectually and temperamentally, he is ill at ease with the diffu-
sion of power around the world and he has set out to reverse the
decline of American power.

He has minced no words in declaring that the top foreign
policy priority of the Reagan administration will be quickly and
dramatically to rearm the United States, to remove what he sees
as a grave menace to the American nuclear deterrent forces, and
to use the threat of a sharp new arms spiral to try to induce the
Soviet leadership to reconsider their own nuclear strategy and ul-
timately to negotiate on terms that Reagan considers more equita-
ble to Washington and its Western allies. As his associates say, he
and they are prepared for a long-haul effort.

Even allowing for the exaggerated hyperbole of a political
campaign, Reagan’s bristling ami-Sovici declarations have con-
stantly rung with alarm. His vision of the American peril, the
Western peril, is apocalyptic, “We now enter one of the most dan-

REAGAN TOE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

gerous decades of Western civilization,” he warned as 1980 began.
Instinctively, he has drawn parallels with the Western weakness
and vacillation after Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia on the
eve of World War II, comparing Jimmmy Carter's reaction to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Neville Chamberlain, the Brit-
ish Prime Minister whose umbrella at Munich in 1938 became a
s)Tnbol of appeasement. “I believe,” he said mockingly in one
campaign quip, “we are seeing the same situation as when Mr.
Chamberlain was tapping the cobblestones of Munich.”

“World War II came about without prov'oeation,” Reagan
reasoned in a more serious setting. “It came because nations were
weak, not strong, in the face of aggression. Those same lessons of
the past surely apply today. Firmness based on a strong defense
capability is not provocative. But weakness can be provocative
simply because it is tempting to a nation whose imperialist ambi-
tions are virtually unlimited. We find ourselves increasingly in a
position of dangerous isolation. Our allies are losing confidence in
us, and our adversaries no longer respect us.”

Like others, Reagan has found “a threatening pattern” in the
Soviet thrust into Afghanistan; in the Soviet and Cuban involve-
ment in Marxist takeovers in Ethiopia, Angola, and South Yemen;
and in Cuban-backed terrorism and upheavals around the Carib-
bean basin. It is Reagan’s lament that “all over the world, we can
see that in the face of declining American power, the Soviets and
their friends are advancing.”

In Africa, in Asia, in the Middle EasE he clearly sees the
Soviet hand behind the tumult of change. “Let us not delude our-
selves,” he said in a candidly revealing comment to The Wall
Street Journal, “the Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is
going on. If they weren’t engaged in this game of dominoes, there
w'ouldn’t be any hot spots in the world.”

That one characteristically sweeping judgment betrayed an ig-
norance of, or a lack of concern for, the home-growm roots and
nationalistic dynamics of the upheaval in Iran, the Arab-Israeli
conflict, unrest in Southern Africa, tension in Turkey, or terrorism
in Ireland, much less the broader economic confrontation ’oetween

100

reagaitswowJ’

sphere and Ihe ,JJvc diversity and turbulence

Reagan’s scheme of things, t e ettp . Qi(,ting cunents mn-

„f the Third World, the “t^E^sian^eare^^

ning through the arc of crisis are essentially unaccounted

Jepende^ of -j"by "de they lahe in the

for. Nations ate judged pro T economies or

global chess Same, by wheth .^tether the

Marxist governments. Situatio ^

cause of freedom is on the march o „ ,ake the politi-

It was characteristic of Reap , P American elec-

cal risks of stirring up sharp dm Vietnam was a

torate, by proclaiming last ’'“8“ ^as a dead issue m the

“noble cause." Up to that pomt Vi«”a ^ ^

campaign, but Reagan felt “ that he spoke out. His

dom and that justice was on have been possible f

strong implication was thal 5 of power at its dis-

“L government” bad applied all the m»n 0 P „ ,at

posauo back American ““ trlcaders is a persistent

ftemwin." Andfailureo wtllby^en „ ,ha

element of Reagan’s critique of America

past quarter of a century. H„„ccd he said, Europe hope-

Taiwan was unccnscionab y ,he Shah of Iran

lessly confused by Carter s P°^^ /^,aful Reagan was m lus

unceremoniously abandon^. Howe '““”° .lon

policy pronouncements about American humih

ton, he consistently “'"'“‘‘"’..'‘"U* the Shah. The calam^
could have been avowed ..puUed

was caused, he argued, me-odd years standing- ,

the'failme of Ameri^n -U au^^

pearances.Hetalksasii American will an

Ltised simply by the fadme of ,hc albe

which allowed the Soviets to exp

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

glosses over the increased power and determined independence of
the Europeans and thinks almost exclusively in terms of American
primacy in the alliance. As A consequence, he seems to believe
that most alliance problems will be resolved and that Europeans
will willingly come under the umbrella of American leadership
once again if Washington only rectifies the strategic balance,
demonstrates global firmness, and provides constancy of direction
for allied policy,

”We must be the arsenal for democracy,” he will say, harking
back to the years before World War II when Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, his early hero, used that as his battle cry to mobilize
popular support for war against Nazi Germany. And with nostal-
gia for an earlier era of Pax Americana, Reagan goes on to add:
“We did not seek leadership of the Free World, but there is no
one else who can provide it, and without our leadership there will
be no peace in the world.”

That same prideful instinct has caused Reagan to seethe in-
wardly over what he sees as humiliations endured by this nation
and its citizens in recent years and to assert repeatedly that Amer-
ica must react more forcefully to protect its interests and its people
around the world. For all his frustrations, America is still a bea-
con to other peoples and the world is still an arena where Ameri-
can power, American technology, American values, the American
example can make a telling difference if American leaders wnll
only be bold enough. One of his fondest memories, Reagan told
one interviewer, was seeing a newsreel of the Spanish Civil War
when an American naval company went “through the streets at
double-time” to an American legation in a Spanish coastal city to
rescue American citizens trapped by fighting. “You couldn’t help
but thrill with pride at that,” he said. So much was America re-
spected, according to Reagan, that the fighting in that region was
temporarily suspended to let the American rescue mission pro-
ceed.

Elsewhere, Reagan may be less prone to commit American
military force than his critics fear. In the campaign. President Car-
ter exaggerated Reagan’s penchant for issuing ultimatums in his

102

REAGAN'S WORLD

effort to paint the Californian as a reckless cowboy packing a six-
gun and ready for a shootout at the least provocation. In a number
of statements cited out of context by Carter, Reagan was actually
advocating the use of American forces for peace-keeping purposes
— in Cyprus, Lebanon, and Rhodesia.

But on other occasions, Reagan was ready — at least rhetori-
cally — to risk actual conflict in defense of American interests. In
1975, when Ecuador seized American tuna boats for fishing inside
what it claimed were its 200-mile territorial waters, Reagan pro-
posed sending a protective Navy destroyer with the tuna boats “to
cruise, say, thirteen miles offshore of Ecuador in an updated ver-
sion of Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum to talk softly but carry a big
sUck.” More menacingly, in 1968 when North Korea seized the
American intelligence ship Pueblo, Reagan declared that the
American response should have been: “Send our ship and our
men out within sbe hours or we’re coming in to get them, and we’U
use planes, guns, torpedoes, whatever it takes.” More recently, he
suggested that America could have blockaded North Korea’s
ports.

In 1976, during the Angolan civil war when East and West
were supplying rival factions, Reagan said more vaguely that it
was “time to eyeball it with Russia and the place to start is in An-
gola.” He may have meant only sending covert aid and supplies.
Just as Carter sent aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1979 and 1980 as a
show of force to bolster nervous friends on the Arabian Peninsula
and the Persian Gulf, Reagan advocated an American military
presence in Sinai and Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Af-
ghanistan. After the American hostages were seized in Iran, he
sounded a blunt — though vague — warning; “What you say in a
situation of that kind — and you don’t say it in newspapers — you
say it directly to them, ‘We want our people back and we want
them back today or the results arc going to be very unpleasant.’ "
But his most risky and controversial advocacy of the use of
force was his persistent call for a naval blockade of Cuba in re-
prisal for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. "My own belief is
that in addiUon to showing the flag there in the Middle East to in-

J03

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

dicatc they might face a confrontation with us,” Reagan said in
the heat of the New Hampshire primary campaign last February,
“we should have a plan of touching them on soft spots — for ex-
ample, the suggestion I’ve made about blockading Cuba.” Despite
the contention of his then-rival, now Vice-President, George
Bush, that a full blockade of Cuba would be terribly costly and
perhaps impossible to impose without risking a clash with the
Russians, Reagan insisted that he was “not talking about
war . . . not being a warmonger. Why couldn’t we blockade Cuba
and then say to them, ‘When your troops get out of Afghanistan,
we win drop the blockade around Cuba?’ ” he said. “And I think
this could exert great pressure. ... I don’t think they could stand
a blockade very long, and I think a little call on the hot line with
this kind of threat might get the withdrawal of the troops from Af-
ghanistan.”

For all his alarms about growing Soviet military superiority,
he contended — somewhat inconsistently and without offering
any evidence — that Moscow would back down in a crunch. The
Moscow that was so menacing in his rhetoric was deemed surpris-
ingly malleable in reality. “I don’t think the Soviet Union has
enough of an edge that they want a confrontation,” Reagan assert-
ed.

Much of what Reagan has been saying for years now mirrors
the mood of America. During the Carter tenure, the public, the
Congress, and the administration itself went through a watershed
change, shifting gradually out of the neo-isolationism and the
near-crippling sense of national culpability that followed the Viet-
nam War. Opinion polls began showing majorities in favor of
higher defense spending. The public, jolted by the Iranian revolu-
tion, the threat to Western oil supplies, and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, seemed ready for a new era of greater American in-
volvement in the world.

Jimmy Carter abandoned his talk of cutting the Pentagon
budget and pulling ground forces out of South Korea. Instead, he
began pushing for bigger defense budgets and formation of a

104

reaqan^worid

assertive nuclear targetmg eyes ablaze, when

cheered and leapt to their feeh c PP ^

Reagan declared that it ,hc world — we

don’t care whether we arc hk y

want to be respected." t, f,„s serious limits on Ameri-

But as Reagan takes olTicc he faces sen_^
can power abroad and on his i„ Congress last

dent, at home as well as abroad. P ,l,j Senate, as-

November, and especially Repubh

sure him a more hospitable clima P p^^oarats in the

and defense poUcies. But a «\“°^>RaaBan's drive for im-
House is stiil ready to ^ deeply into domestic

proved national defense from support of his foreign

programs. His opening bids for P balance in the Senate,
policy wiil help him. But with senatorial opposition to

Lagan may not escape «■' ° L nucl=»' f“'' ">
levels of aid or the supply of Presidents. More broadly,

nations abroad that has curtai e campaign about exces-

the widespread public Lt an Leasy public may

live interventionism abroad mdicales

be a restraining factor, intractable world than the

Abroad, Reagan faces a much m soviet

one idealized in his campaign speecn . ^ niic

military strength that sets luni s J^^ey in the Middle Eas ,

power of Europe and Japan, oil d P ^ .j^n complexities of
Ld the weakness of the Amencan economy^_^^ ^ ^

the strategic triangle, the ^.^nd-white categories o s

do not yield readily to -the "'f e and elsewhere see te

geopoUtical checkerboard. Alhes “ ^ “unterproduc

overarching anti-Communism a Europeans, and o

live. China, the OPEC powers. We«e™ Jv/ashington that
have economic and P°“*‘^ ^’^Lutary power. And they a
wiU not yield to greater Amencan

103

REAGAN TJIE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

not, as Reagan has suggested, playing some Soviet game, but act-
ing in their own interests. Almost everysvhere, Reagan’s nostalgic
ideological impulses arc bound to bump into contemporaty real-
ities that he has overlooked or cast aside and that now stand like
rocks in his path.

Given Reagan’s lack of record in foreign affairs, it is impossi-
ble to predict his foreign policy with precision. Philosophically, he
has laid the groundwork for radical departures from the policies
of President Carter. He has opposed detente. Salt II, and the re-
turn of the Panama Canal to Panama. He believes that a stepped-
up arms race can lead to arms reduction ultimately. His rumbling
rhetoric about the use of force and his recollection of the Vietnam
War as “a noble cause” seem to foreshadow an aggressive poh'cy
in the Third World. Indeed, there and toward Moscow, he will
take a new' tack. But in other areas his course may not diverge so
dramatically from Carter’s as both of them made it sound during
the campaign. He’ll have to trim his sails to realities.

“I would not foresee radical policy' shifts in the Reagan ad-
ministration,” said Richard V. Allen, his top foreign policy' ad-
viser in the campaign, sounding the pragmatic theme for Reagan.
“There are sobering realities that confront a President on January
21st. Vr’e do not control events. All we can do is shape them.”

In one classic case, Reagan had to shift to the Carter course in
the midst of his own campaign: toward China. That country is a
prototype of situations where Reagan’s over-hasty and outdated
ideological reflexes have gotten him into trouble and he has had
to change position. With greater pragmatism than he is usually
given credit for, Reagan had long before muted his outspoken
anti-Communist rhetoric toward China and his long-held suspi-
cion of the Peking regime, in good part bec:atise he began to see
China as a potential partner in the three'-<x)mered strategic poker
game with the Sosiet Union. V'ith the Republican nomination in
hand last July, he began espotising broader relations with China
and sent his running mate, George Btish, on a gcxjdwill mission to

106

REACAN^ WORLD

Peking designed to cam points with the electorate for the sensitive
and moderate approach of a Reagan administration.

Instead, the rhetorical Reagan torpedoed the pragmatic Rea-
gan’s mission before it was launched by getting snarled up in one
of his pet ideological attachments: Taiwan. In December 1978, the
Carter administration had agreed to have the United States repre-
sented in Taiwan by a private foundation, stafTed by American
diplomats, but Reagan, an ardent friend of Taiwan, had been out-
raged to see an old ally treated this way. Campaigning in May he
had declared that if elected, he would seek to re-establish “official
tclaiions’j with Taiwan, which be called “the true Republic of
China.” Despite his parallel interest in broadening ties with Pe-
king, the Chinese were angered by his resurrection of the Taiwan
issue. Reagan, bellowed the Peking People’s Daily, intends to turn
ihc clock back and conduct American foreign policy as if there
Were two Chinas. It will be very dangerous.”

The candidate himself raced off to other matters closer to
home while Allen tried to repair the damage and brush the whole
controversy under the rug. Alien, who is more attuned than Rea-
gan to the nuances of diplomacy, the terms of the American-Chi-
nese diplomatic agreement, and the technicalities of the Taiwan
Relations Act expressing congressional approval for unofficial
relations, insisted in July that Reagan bad given up the idea of
resuming “official relations” with Taiwan. He did not intend to
alter the status quo, Allen said.

Yet as Bush was preparing lo board his plane to China, Rea-
gan revived the thorny issue of “official relations” with Taiwan at
an airport news conference in Los Angeles on August 18, As Bush
winged his way across the Pacific, Peking admonished Reagan for
a “brazen” and “absurd” position that “would in fact destroy the
basic principle of normalization of U.S. -China relations and
surely affect normalization between the two countries.” In other
words, chose them or us, Peking was telling Reagan.

For several awkward days, while Bush was eating long Chi-
nese dinners in Peking and frying to reassure his Chinese hosts

107

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

that the Reagan administration did not intend to change the ac-
cepted terms of relations, Reagan continued clumsily to sow con-
fusion back in America. Once again, he came out for “official
government relations” with Taiwan. As Bush departed from Pe-
king, the Chinese gave him a parting blast, saying his mission had
"failed to reassure China” about Reagan’s intentions.

Back in California, the two Republicans held a news confer-
ence on August 25 in which the rhetorical, right-wing Reagan had
to bow to reality — China was more important than Taiwan and
the die had already been cast. He conceded past misstatements
and pointedly dropped his insistence on “official relations” with
Taiwan. With some justification, Reagan contended that since the
American Institute in Taiwan was so heavily staffed by American
diplomats, it was transparently “hypocritical” to pretend that this
was an “unofficial” agency — though that is what he himself had
previously been saying. But from now on, Reagan said, he would
regard the institute as official in reality if not in name.

For Reagan, that ended the episode. The pragmatic Reagan
has since reaffirmed, more stoutly than ever, his desire to promote
the "rapid growth” of American ties with China, though he left
rather vague whether this meant making available some military
equipment and coordinating strategies to contain the Soviet
Union as well as boosting trade and cultural exchanges. Whatever
the intent, he sounded very much in harmony with Carter policy
as he approached his election. Nonetheless, Reagan is now handi-
capped. Peking continues to sputter and fume. As President, Rea-
gan begins his tenure with a fresh legacy of mistrust to overcome
in Peking because of his own clumsiness.

The entire episode may be symptomatic of the kind of diffi-
culty Reagan may encounter with other major world powers —
for example, in Europe — because of his relative inexperience and
his insensitivity to the changes of the past decade or two. His im-
pulse to shore up the alliance parallels Carter’s basic approach.
But if the former Governor of Georgia never won lasting respect
from European leaders because he failed to appreciate adequately

108

R£AOA>rs WORLD

their, iudepcndent-minded views, Reagan may compound that
problem.

“There’s a generation gap between what Reagan thinks he
knows about the world and the reality,” observes John Sears, the
Washington attorney who managed Reagan’s 1976 campaign and
did it again in 1980 until he was dismissed early in the year. “His
is a kind of I9S2 world. He sees the world in black and white
terms. That's okay if he has the right Secretary of State and the
right National Security Adviser. The dangerous thing is not the
Russians, but other situations beyond* the Russians. Reagan’s
going to be upset to fmd out that some countries in Western Eu-
rope part company with us rather sharply on a number of issues.
He tends to assume a community of l^th objectives and tactics,
that all want, at bottom, to ‘beat the Russians.’ ”

Dealing with the alliance powers will prove a major test of
Reagan’s adaptability. For coming into oHlce. be seemed not to
have fathomed bow much American inCuence in the alliance has
diminished as a natural consequence of European resurgence. His
own perspective bears the hallmark of a simpler era when Ameri*
can power was so preeminent that Washington’s decisions set the
course for NATO. Now, for all his talk of improving alliance
cooperation, he conveys an implicit, underlying go-it-alone
American philosophy that assumes that if America only shows
forceful leadenhip, loyal allies will naturally follow.

In Reagan’s rather wistful view. America’s current difficulties
with its major allies arc traceable to erratic Carter leadership and
strategic slippage in the competition with Moscow. Carter caused
confusion, Reagan has argued, by pushing a neutron warhead for
the European theater and then backtracking once the Germans
were ready to go along. His implication is that wider harmony can
be restored by pressing ahead with a neutron warhead: never
mind divisions among European nations on this issue or the pub-
lic opposition that plagues even some of those governments ready
to move ahead. Reagaa’a stress oa military preparedness will
boost morale, no doubt, in some quarters of Europe. But his hard-

i09

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRF.SIDEST

line talk of standing against the Russians already has other Euro-
peans nervous. The lesson lies ahead that alliance leadership re-
quires more than a certain trumpet.

Reagan used the first press conference after his election to
reassure the allies and to proclaim the importance of the Euro-
peans and his desire for “very close” relations with France, among
others. But in the simplistic syinmctry’ of his bipolar world he has
showTi little comprehension that European leaders such as Presi-
dent Giscard d’Estaing of France see a positive virtue in a strong,
independent Europe able to deal with the United States on equal
footing and to conduct its own aiTairs syith the Russians, rather
than having Washington speak for a united West. With Europe
resurgent, economic rivalries and centrifugal forces divide the
Western powers, apart from any Soviet chicanery or shortfalls in
the Western arsenal. If Reagan treats Europe as an off-shoot of
the Sovict-Amcrican relationship, he is in for trouble.

During the campaign, for example, when European leaders
were balking at President Carter’s retaliatory- grain embargo
against the Russians, Reagan was complaining that the action was
too mild. What the rhetorical Reagan advocated was a complete,
across-the-board trade boycott, show-ing little comprehension that
the Germans, French, and other continental powers have little
taste for confrontation with Moscow over Afghanistan because
they have a far greater economic slake in detente than America. If
Reagan follows his historic right-wing impulses to face down the
Russians, he is likely to be left out on a limb with little meaningful
support from the alliance. Here, as with China, the pragmatic
Reagan is likely to have to make adjustments.

Obviously foreshadowing the difficulties ahead. Senator How-
ard Baker of Teimessee issued a report after a trip to Europe in
August declaring that a unified Western response to Afghanistan
had been hampered by “a substantially different interpretation of
detente in Europe from that of the most prudent observers in the
United States.” Baker — hardly noted for extremism — said he
had found a “fundamental disagreement over the character of the

110

REAGAN^ WOULD

political and military policies required for the conduct of stable'
East’Wcsi relations.” In concrete terms, this meant that at a time
when Reagan’s experts were talking about an increase of 7-to-9
percent in the -military budget (a real increase, after innation),
Chancellor Schmidt was saying that West Germany’s economic
problems might keep it from meeting the allowance goal of raising
defense spending by 3 percent a year.

Not only economic rivalries but differing approaches to the
common need for imported energy drive perplexing wedges in the
alliance, and so far Reagan has shown little appreciation of how
Europe and America diverge on this issue. The Europeans, feeling
far more dependent on Middle East oil and hence much more vul-
nerable than America to another Arab oil embargo or cutoff aris-
ing from a regional war. have taken a different tack in their diplo-
macy, and may wind up differing more sharply with Reagan than
with Jimmy Carter.

Optimistically, both Reagan and the Republican platform talk
of working to revive (he North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
perhaps to extend its arm of protection into such strategic regions
as the Indian Ocean. The Iraqi war with Iran, which stirred a
common Western impulse to protect the vital flow of oil through
the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, may have provided
an opening for the kind of collaboration a Reagan administrat ion
would like to pursue.

Skillful diplomacy may succeed. But if the Reagan team
pushes for rapid construction of a new architecture of regional al-
liances, reminiscent of the 1950s, they face reluctant partners in
Europe, Except in the most acute situations — and they arc usu-
ally temporary — European leaders do not share what has come
across to them as Reagan’s inclination to draw lines in the sand
against Russians or others who threaten Western interests. Rather
than sharing Reagan’s rhetorical inclination to threaten force, the
Europeans have favored intricate peace diplomacy sympathetic to
ffte {kit atif- pav dhenr orr f cuvWV.vsw wiVA*

gan. For the Europeans have looked for some time to an equitable

JIJ

REAGAN THE MAN.THE PRESIDENT

Arab-Israeli peace agreement as the best long-term guarantee of a
steady supply of Middle East oil to the West.

The Third World is one of two areas (the Soviet Union is the
other) where Reagan’s policies will probably diverge most notice-
ably from the Carter years. Although Carter warned Americans
that Reagan is “trigger-happy” and prone to use force, that may
not be Reagan’s main problem in the most turbulent regions of
the Third World. Reagan is a self-confident man, not one plagued
by the kind of personal insecurities that would prompt him as
President into a macho display of power to prove himself. Some
who have known him for a long time, like John Sears, do not be-
lieve that he will be as reckless or as aggressive as his right-wing
rhetoric has made him sound.

In the one Third World crisis that persisted during the cam-
paign, Reagan was very restrained about the use of American
power. He was less venturesome than President Carter, who
warned in his State of the Union Address last January that Amer-
ica was ready to use any means, including force, to repel an out-
side attempt to control the Persian Gulf. In San Francisco last
May, Reagan was asked whether he would send Moscow “a clear-
cut ultimatum not to meddle” in Iran or risk American counterac-
tion. His reply was to raise a cautionary theme he sounded several
more times in the campaign: America was not strong enough or
positioned well enough to make such a threat.

“We could send an ultimatum but what would we back it up
with?” he asked. Russia, he contended, has 150,000 troops poised
on the Iranian border, far outgunning the Americans. “Logistical-
ly, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of miles from our
borders,” he said. “Maybe the signal [against Soviet intervention]
we should send should be a bit further back, and that might be
Saudi Arabia. And if we send it, we should send it only with the
collaboration of our allies, Japan and Europe, who are so depend-
ent on OPEC oil.” Such comments caused former Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger to observe much later, “Recklessness will
... be the least of Reagan’s problems.”

112

REAGANS WORLD

A more liioly '^'l^blyti'SrThW World and

pta forces .hat boil over „ friend or foe ar.d base

to rdlexive instmet to ““6'’.'“ ii,e Reagan years, Car-

to diplomacy on that ^ ^ North-South dialogue,

sans of the other side. ,, liielv to move toward more clear-

A Reagan admimstratiou « ^^e^ „ South Korea and

eu. and untroubled relations ^„rieal Reagan's penchant
the PhiUppines. But alienate lefl-leamus uon-

for ideological judgment may ,„ ultimate

aligned states such as India and Iraq a ^ Nicaragua,

accommodation with Manust "8' ,^ j„eh as Pakistan, Saudi

but it may even *‘“'*“‘5, Y vtciUate about how

Arabia, and Jordan, “ho father they would hke an

and Latin America somctimw inexperience or lack

about the world and betrays R'J’^^arican Wends abroad that

ohistication about fnrtions a"””* j tone American diplo

Cwashington's -"aueuve^g „„„,ri.be aU.es m

,gau has talked '-'’h“““';“''^a|rin of others. R'P'a''^.

oaiedeUgh. oJ_somean^he*^l^ springs oo-P_^„

proclaimec
marily from a

has proclaimed that - j jelationship or ® fatally on

nsariy from a histone ^ most f^dameny^^^

inherited from the struggle, Is'a' -jographic re-

te calculation that m to glo ^ „,al geog P

Uia.caninsomeunderu.edwa, ^ in a spot

stable democracy we can rely

gion.

■•Israel is the only

113

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

where Armageddon could come,” he has said. “The greatest re-
ponsibility the United States has is to preserve peace — and we
need an ally in that area. We must prevent the Soviet Union from
penetrating the Mideast. The Nixon administration unsuccessfully
moved them out. If Israel were not there, the United States would
have to be there.” More concretely, Reagan has talked, for exam-
ple, of forming an anti-Soviet defense alliance with Israel, Egypt,
and Saudi Arabia — an adaptation of the defunct Baghdad Pact
strategy of the 195bs so ardently promoted by the late John Foster
Dulles. At other times, Reagan has sounded as though he would
like to base American forces, more or less permanently, in
Israel.

But in his friendship and support of Israel, pushed so zeal-
ously during the election campaign, he seemed oblivious to the
price he would pay among the Arabs if he pursued this strategy in
office. Too ardent an embrace of Israel would not only inflame
the Arab radicals but offend such moderates as Saudi Arabia, the
Persian Gulf emirates, and Jordan. Reagan’s campaign rhetoric
suggested, moreover, that he does not see the Palestinian question
as an issue of fundamental consequence to the Saudis and other
Arabs, and hence has failed to grasp its significance for the wider
American strategy in the Middle East, either to secure oil or foil
the Soviets. He may speak with admiration of President Anwar
Sadat of Egypt or suggest throwing the mantle of Western protec-
tion around the Saudi monarchy. But in his eager pursuit of Jew-
ish support in his race for the Presidency, he has given virtually
unqualified endorsement to the Israeli position, breaking with es-
tablished American policy by backing Israel’s push for West Bank
settlement and its integration of Jerusalem as its undivided capi-
taL “An undivided city of Jersualem means sovereignty for Israel
over the city,” he told a delighted band of Jewish leaders in New
York. “The West Bank should be a decision worked out by Jor-
dan and Israel. I would never have supported dismantling [of Is-
raeli settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem].”

Like others, Reagan has disparaged the Palestine Liberation

114

REAOAtfS WORLD

Organization as “a terrorist grotip** with ominous lints to Mos*
cow. He has also treated the Palestinian issue as a refugee prob-
lem soluble by some mechanistic mathematical formula, rather
than an explosively complex political issue with wide ramifica-
tions for American relations with the Arab world, and for rela-
tions with Europe beyond. “Palestine was never a country, " Rea-
gan observed in one political debate. “It was a territory, an area,
and it was a British mandate. And it was the British government
that created the Kingdom of Jordan which is 80 percent of what
used to be Palestine. The Israelis have less than 20 percent of what
was Palestine. The Palestinian refugee problem, it seems to me
then, is an 80 pcrcent'20 percent problem of Jordan and Israel.”

Without Jordan’s participation in peace negotiations, that ap-
proach can hardly succeed. No sooner did be win the election than
Reagan expressed an interest in meeting with King Hussein of
Jordan. But his public positions are hardly enticing to Hussein.
Reagan has gone further than any previous American President in
disagreeing with Jordanian terms for a seiilemeni by backing Is-
rael's West Bank settlements and Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
These views will prove a considerable handicap to any effort Rea-
gan makes to draw the King into Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.

In the end, unless the pragmatic Reagan moderates the rhetor-
ical Reagan’s positions and launches a deliberate diplomacy to
woo the moderate Arabs, the new President may even find himself
hard-pressed to keep President Sadat of Egypt engaged in negotia-
tions with Israel. For Sadat's patience has tested heavily on his
personal relationship with Jimmy Carter and his faith in Carter’s
even-handedness between Israel and Egypt. And an open collapse
of the peace process in the Middle East will invite wider violence
in an already volatile region.

Somewhat belatedly, Reagan made friendly noises toward
Saudi Arabia, the most imponant of the oil suppliers, a nation
that has repeatedly resisted or moderated the sharpest OPEC price
increases and boosted its oil output to help the West during the
Iranian crisis. The Saudis arc likely to lest Reagan quickly by

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

renewing their request for sophisticated equipment that will give
offensive capability for the American-built F-15 fighters sold to
them by the Carter administration.

Because Israel so vocally opposed such a sale, reminding Car-
ter that he had promised the Senate that no such equipment
would be added to the planes, he rejected the Saudi request on the
virtual eve of the election. But with a new administration in office,
the issue is bound to be revived and Reagan’s reaction watched as
a touchstone of his attitudes in office.

Elsewhere in the Third World, Reagan’s ideological instincts,
if carried into practice, wUl produce cleavages that Carter sought
to avoid. In Latin America, for example, the Reagan approach
will probably refurbish relations with what Reagan strategists like
to c^ “the ABC cotmtries” — Argentina, Brazil, and Chile —
which had their frictions with the Carter administration over
human rights. Conversely, it will almost certainly bring diplo-
matic clashes and perhaps more with Fidel Castro’s Cuba and
Caribbean leftists.

Reagan himself has called Latin America a touchstone for
American relations with the Third World and a rising battle-
ground with Communism. He has berated the Carter administra-,
tion for ignoring realpolitik by its idealistic “bullying” of coun-
tries like Bra^ and Argentina. And alarmed by what he sees as
the rising leftist threat in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras, he has sharply chided his predecessor for aiding the
leftist Sandanista government in Nicaragua. At heart, his fear is
that Castro, acting as an agent for the Kremlin, is fomenting revo-
lution and turmoil around the Caribbean, aiming to turn it into
what Reagan called “a red sea” that will eventually engulf Mexico
and leave the United States with a hostile, oil-rich neighbor on its
southern border.

The hallmark of Reagan’s own approach to Latin America for
years was his relentless campaign against the treaties that will
eventually turn over control of the Panama Canal to Panama. His
blunt summary was: “We built it. We paid for it It’s ours, and
we’re going to keep it.” Now that the treaties have been ratified.

116

REAOAN-S WORLD

however, the pragmatic Uve up to their

raised the issue only to warn that Panama mu

Spirit and letter. «,nnded the trumpet for a

The Tut

battle against Cartbbean ’ .elf oromised to “initiate a pro-

speech on October 19 , Reapn P eooperatmg coun-
gram of intensive economic he seemed to differenti-

friesoftheCaribbean-Betweentbe^

ate between general leftists an ^ prospect of

and the KremUn, and rafter “ft America^elp.

fmancial and technical aid for those re«pt
Only practice d'"”' "Tn'^^e”ds to pursue a progms-
It is clear, however, that K^^ause of its obvious size,

sive policy toward Mexico ^ O„.,„„or of Califor-

wealft, and importance but , i„„al Mexican immi-
nia, he dealt personally with the tssue of H ga ^^, 1 ,

grants, and as a candidate he vist«d Mf “k^g of a North
President Lopel Portillo. He „ aeparture of his

American Accord, the “""“'.Trd, Ld L United States,
campaign, embraemg Mexico, ,o enable the three

What he envisioned was a iripart from their

oeighbors to deal home advocating an

interdependent economies. ”1. Mexican migrant workers sure
American open-border policy jit,usinesses m the Sout w

to appeal to the kind of political tensions with

who back Reagan, but also like y jg percent unemp ^

Mexico. "They have a P'"”''” .f^Tdonh we work out some
ment ” Reagan said of Mexico Why f„t them ft

recognition of our mutual P™”''®';, ,he only safety valve

com! here legally witha«orkpe™ftT__^^^, loan,

they have right now w ifHown there.” a Mexico is

keep the Ud from blowing off de^ jo loward Mexico

Reagan associate, contend that h ^

tadicative of h.h "TTnotTfdeologically risM^T^r’a mixed

Tr"'l^"st government that presideso

117

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

economy, as in Mexico, especially if there is the specter of an even
more threatening swing to the far left. It is that bogeyman of
Marxist extremism or the Soviet bear that may produce the most
pragmatic actions of the Reagan administration in the Third
World.

By far the most striking break from Carter's foreign policy ap-
pears in Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union. He has rejerted
“the illusion of detente,” which he claims lulled the West into ex-
pecting Soviet restraint around the world and in the arms race. He
has vowed to withdraw from the Senate the Strategic Arms Limi-
tation Treaty negotiated from 1972 until 1979 and signed by Car-
ter and Brezhnev in Vienna, as a “flawed treaty” that permits the
Soviets to race ahead with their military buildup while restraining
the United States and, as he and his advisers like to put it, “freeze
the United States into a position of permanent inferiority.” Until
close to the end of his campaign, he talked the language of con-
frontation. Only in the waning fortnight, with the election in the
balance, did Reagan stike a more pragmatic and balanced ap-
proach on both arms control and general dealings with the Rus-
sians.

But his latest positions come against the backdrop of his fer-
vent, long-held views that “there is a Communist plan for world
conquest” with the United States as the ultimate target. In his fa-
mous television speech in 1964 on behalf of Senator Bany Gold-
water, then the Republican nominee, Reagan posed the global
contest in stark and dramatic terms: “We are at war with the most
dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb
from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that
war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will
record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most
to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”

Western peril, he has suggested, is at its peak in the era of de-
tente because of false expectations. “Where is the Soviet restraint
promised in the Code of Detente of 1972?” the rhetorical Reagan
asked last spring. “Is it visible in the Russian military buildup in

118

REAGANS WORLD

North Korea? Or in the occupied islands north of Japan? Did we
see it in Hanoi’s annexation of Indochina? In Soviet complicity in
the starvation of the people of Cambodia? The Soviet provision of
poison gas used against the hill tribesmen of Laos? Is Russian re*
straint evident in their military intervention with Cuban proxies in
wars in Angola and Ethiopia? Is it visible in their imperial inva*
sion of the then independent, neutral nation of Afghanistan,
where they executed their own puppet president and his entire
family, including even his threc-year-oM daughter?"

Far more unnerving in Reagan’s eyes, however, has been
Moscow’s drive for strategic nuclear superiority which, if un-
checked and unmatched, as he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars
in Chicago last August, threatens the West with an ultimate choice
of war or surrender. "The Soviets want peace and victory," he as-
serted. ‘They seek a superiority in military strength that, in the
event of a confrontation, would leave us with an unacceptable
choice between submission or conflict.”

"We face a situation in which our principal adversary, the
Soviet Union, surpasses us in virtually every category of military
strength," he said last spring. Later, he estimated that the Soviets
"lead us in all but six or etght Jof the forty strategic military cate-
gories] and may well surpass us in (hose, if present trends contin-
ue.” Over the past decade, he has argued, Moscow spent $240 bil-
lion more than Washington on defense and is now outspending
America by $50 billion a year.

Such anxieties have plagued conservatives and hawks for
years. But they now win a broader consensus among Washington
policy-makers and reflect a more pervasive public mood. The
Reagan camp can cite not only its own experts but also top mili-
tary brass in the Carter administration. As Reagan reminded a na-
tional television audience on October 19, the Senate Armed Serv-
ices Committee was so concerned about the trends in the arms
race that it concluded in December 1979 that “the SALT II
Treaty, as it now stands, is not in the national security interests of
the United Stales of America.”

Most significantly, the Reaganites were armed with the firet

II9

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

acknowledgement from Harold R. Brown, the Carter Defense
Secretary, that Soviet nuclear forces have developed sufficient
capability in late 1980 that the American arsenal of 1,054 land-
based missiles “could be destroyed within a very short time as one
result of a Soviet surprise attack.” Moreover, with Soviet capabil-
ities improving far more rapidly than American intelligence had
expected only a year or two ago. Brown contended that “at least
potentially” Soviet programs would “threaten the survivability of
each component of our strategic forces” — bombers and subma-
rines as well as land-based ICBMs. Later, Brown backtracked a
bit on that estimate, but Reagan’s argument had already been but-
tressed.

The Reagan strategy is to withdraw the SALT II arms control
agreement and to put pressure on the Soviet leadership to agree to
an agreement more favorable to Washington by confronting the
Kremlin with a major new American military surge which, as the
Republican platform optimistically put it, will be “sufficient to
close the gap and ultimately reach the position of military superi-
ority.” So controversial and scary is the concept of superiority to
much of the American electorate that the mere mention of it re-
vived anxious debate over the prospect of an open-ended arms
race that would permanently kill all prospects for arms control.
Reagan found refuge during the campaign in the ambivalent dec-
laration that he wanted to “restore the margin of safety” for
America, letting conservatives read that as superiority and moder-
ates and liberals hope that it meant something less.

“My objection to SALT II is not arms limitation,” he said in a
crucial interview with The Associated Press on October 1. “It le-
gitimizes the arms race. It begins by letting the Soviet Union build
3,000 more warheads, then we can buUd some to catch up, only we
can’t catch up until 1990. 1 think it is a fatally flawed treaty, and it
isn’t arms limitation. If we’re really going to try to remove the
danger to the world today, let’s sit down with the intention voiced
and the agreement of the other side that we’re going to find a way
to fairly reduce the strategic weapons [of both sides] so that nei-
ther one of us can threaten the other.”

120

REAGATPSWORl-D

But, be insisted, the American slant on arms talks had to be
different from the past. “I don’t think that we should sit at the
table the way we have in the past,” he said. "We have been unilat*
erally disarming at the same time we’re negotiating supposed arms
limitation with the other fellow, where all he has to do is sit there
and not give up anything and his superiority increases. He wUl be
far more inclined to negotiate in good faith if he knows that the
United States is engaged in building up its military. ‘They know
our industrial strength. They know our capacity. The one card
that’s been missing in these negotiations has been the possibility of
an arms race. Now the Soviets have been racing, but with no
competition. No one else is racing. And so I think that we’d get a
lot farther at the table if they know that as they continue, they’re
faced with our industrial capacity and aU that we can do.’’

His objectives, he went on to say, were either to persuade the
Kremlin to accept absolute arms teduaions or to improve the
American defense posture to the point that "once again the possi-*
bility of a (Soviet] pre*en}plive strike has been eliminated."
Throughout the campaign, Reagan and bis aides studiously
avoided putting a precise time frame and a dollar celling on their
projected buildup. Reagan pledged simply to spend "whatever is
necessary.”

Despite his skittishness about budget llgures, Reagan has
made clear his intention to give defense spending priority not only
over domestic programs but even over balancing the budget, long
one of his cherished goals. By the estimaies of some of his advis-
ers, the Reagan defense budgets between now and 1985 will run at
least $150 billion and perhaps about $250 billion more than the
Carter administration had planned to spend.

But in Reagan’s prescription, more than dollars are required.
If America is to achieve what be calls "peace through strength,” it
must regain its will, its firmness. It must shake what he calls "the
Vietnam syndrome.” The lesson of that war, he contends, was not
that it was mistaken or immoiaj but simply this: "If we are forced
to fight, we must have the means and the determination to prevail
or we will not have what it takes to secure the peace.”

12 !

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

Seeking to capitalize politically on the ominous sound of the
Reagan program, President Carter warned that his challenger was
edging the nation toward “a nuclear precipice.” Reagan, he said,
was “extraordinarily naive” about the nuclear arms race and
Soviet psychology and “does not understand the serious conse-
quences of what he’s proposing.” From his own experience. Carter
declared, it was a “naive assumption” that the Soviets’ response
“to all these steps will be to agree to new concessions and reduc-
tions in their nuclear arsenal.” Coming from Carter, the point
seemed especially well taken, for he began his administration in
1977 by setting aside the Nixon and Ford efforts toward a SALT
II agreement and sending his Secretary of State, Cyrus R. Vance,
to Moscow to seek significant arms reduction. Moscow objected
strenuously, publicly denounced the idea, and stonily forced the
Carter administration to revive the Vladivostok formula, worked
out in 1974 by former President Ford, and to use that as the basis
for a new arms agreement.

During the campaign, the Soviet press lampooned Reagan “as
an aggressive and ignorant Californian who does not remember
the name of the President of France, who mixes up North Viet-
nam and North Korea, and who repeatedly refers to Indonesia as
Indochina. But with the realpolitik that guides Soviet thinking, the
tone changed after the election. Moscow did not immediately slam
the door to Reagan’s approach on SALT. It was up to the new ad-
ministration, the Soviets told an American delegation to Moscow
in November, to propose “desired changes” in the SALT II treaty.
Some of the American group were encouraged by Moscow’s ap-
parent willingness to listen. On November 17, Brezhnev made a
point of treating Reagan’s campaiign oratory as a filing of the past,
asserting that “any constructive steps” by Washington would meet
with “a positive reaction on our part.”

In practice, that may not turn out to be as promising as it
sounds. One of the participants in the informal Soviet-American
talks, Lincoln Bloomfield, an arms control specialist with long ex-
perience with the Russians, called the latest meeting “one of the

122

N«w T««m R«publ(C4n noniiacei K«fl4ld l(ca(sn. %>ih hu wife Nancy and Oeorge Suth.
With hi< wife Barbara, tout a Kotutottahoppingmanthotilyafunhe Republican National
Convention (VPi)

OFF AND RUNNING

In Charge Candidate Reagan hold* hn Tine ttaff meeting after being nominated Ibe
Republican presidential candidate MR/

INSIDE THE REAGAN CAMPAIGN

William J. Casey; Reagan’s presidential campaign director.
(Wide World)

Richard Wirthlin: Reagan’s campaign pollster and senior
strategist. (Wide World)

James A. Baker HI; George Bush’s presidential campaign
director. President Ford’s Undersecretary of Commerce, and
campaign director against Jimmy Carter in 1976. (Wide
World)

Lyn Nofziger. An old hand from Reagan’s California
governorship, he joined the Reagan presidential campaign as
press secretary. (Wide World)

Stuart Spencen A veteran California political consultant, he
played a key role in planning the Reagan victory strategy.
(Wide World)

Dr KUrtin Anderson A ftliow M the Hoover Imiituie ii
5i*nford Unisersity. Anderson hat been Reagan's scnioi
domestic-affairs adsiser (H'ldr tt'orU)

Richard V Allen Reagan's chief loreigii-]K>Iicy adviser, he
served on the hiaon administration's hiaiiooal Security
Council Charges that he had profiled from (hat office led to
his Kjihdranal from the campaign lonard the end. though
Reagan expressed full canfidence in him He was a senior
adviser on the transition team ffPiifr H'or/ef)

Ed«inMecselU Kcaen a po«<isiniggle»iih John? Sears
and emerged as the campaigns chief of staff He holds a newly
ereaied Cabinet post. Counselor to the Presideni /Widf
Itar/JJ

P Sears . '

.'S

John P Sears fJf/0 Reagan'r chief of staff m the 1976 presidenti^j campaign and again i
1980 until he lost out to Edwin Meese Sears discovered that Reagan vat prepared lobequit
unconventional—io the discomfon of more conservative Republicans Senaror Paul Lara:
frighij A longtime Reagan friend and poliucal counselor.

Republican from Nevada flfide HorfdJ

Milton Friedman (right): Professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a Nobel
laureate. (VPI)

Charts E. Walker (Ifft ): Former Deputy Secretary of the T reasury and chief lax adviser to
Reagan- (AP)

THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Rough Going: As Reagan campaigns
at a steel plant in Youngstown, Ohio,
he passes a Carter poster. (AP)

Easy Going: Toward the campaign’s
end, Reagan is greeting by scores of
supporters in Florida. fAP^

KEY POINTS

W^-

.Vrjj' i 3

V --- ■r->-c<-T7-.--

®®lSf

Plane Straleg>". Reagan hears out adviser Alan Greenspan Oefi) on the candidate's major
economic speech u'hile adviser Martin Anderson listens. (VPI)

Debate Strategy- Reagan plans for the nationally televised debate against President Carter
vsith advisers Richard Wirthlin (back to camera) and William Simon. (AP)

F«ce-to-Faw PrtiidMit Carter aiul Reagan greet each other on stage before iheir only

campaign debate Reagan Vi as generally eonsKtered to hatrteomfwcfl against Carter, a Atgh-

laaiet mark for himan the campaign. (VFI)

CirterLosn Prctidea(C*n«rcone«d«tde(ea)e«tlyinih««v«nintoI£)«ciienDiy Wjthhun
att hi* wtf« Roialyan. daughter Amy. tn4 (randson Jaion. (VPlj

Sad New* At *hat ikould hav« b«tn hi* vtcioty cttehniioa. PrttiQent Canat it consoled by
his sialT snd bit cabinet ofTictn and their wives (UPl)

VICTORY!

Winning Team: President-elect Ronald Reagan and Vice-President-elect George Bush at

: } their first news conference, November 7. M/V

. > - - - I Fll

RMginTali<iiheC«t« Th«map4nttKRe*(*nv>oorycaU.«icAna{sm«riiinsihesu(ethe
Vron, indicates the Reagan landslide (APf

Many Happy Returns President'etect Rra|an and ’KiUNancyenioyacongtatulaiory cation
election ni|M (Af)

REAGAKSWORLD

most sober I ever experienced. I thought they (the Soviets] were
quite pessimistic in their evaluations of the period ahead.”

Whatever is now said in public, Reagan brooks the disfavor of
the Soviet leadership by rejecting an arms agreement negotiated
by two previous Presidents. More fundamentally, having achieved
at least rough strategic parity with America through an eighteen-
year arms buildup, the Soviet leaders arc unlikely to let it slip now
from their grasp. Their arms programs have developed momen-
tum, far more momentum than the American experts anticipated
only a few years ago. And it took long, arduous bargaining for
them to accept the agreement that Reagan believes is to their ad-
vantage, making it highly unlikely that they will accede any time
soon to what he obviously intends as his advantageous terms.

Another complication arose in Reagan’s first comments after
the election when he said be would link arms negotiations with
Soviet behavior arourtd the world. ”1 believe in linkage,” he said,
reviving a Nixbn-era concept abandoned by the Carter adminis-
tration. ‘The policies of aggression of the Soviet Union . . . must
be a part of discussions and negotiations that go forward,” he said.
“I don’t think you simply sit down at the table to discuss arms
limitations, for example, but you discuss the whole attitude, world
attitude, as to whether we’re going to have a world of peace or
whether we’re simply going to talk about weaponry and not bring
up these other subjects.” To Time magazine, he suggested that if
Moscow did not like the idea that "their overall policy of aggres-
sion must be a part of what is going on at the negotiating
table . . . maybe the disadvantage [to them] would be that you
wouldn’t negotiate.”

The hard Reagan line, coming at a time of Soviet transition to
new leadership, may spur yet another Soviet effort to repair rela-
tions with China and prompt new Soviet stratagems to split off
America from West Europeans who have come to regard arms
control agreements as a reassuring foundation for detente.

Sensing nervousness about Ms approach, the pragmatic Rea-
gan sought to calm an anxious American electorate with his prom-

123

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

ise on October 19 to “begin immediate preparations for negotia-
tions on a SALT III treaty.” He replaced some of his own bristling
rhetoric with the assertion that “we seek neither confrontation nor
conflict” and the conviction that “with our allies, we can conduct
a realistic and balanced policy toward the Soviet Union.” And in
his first post-election press conference, he was more positive than
previously about SALT IL He suggested that it not be rejected out
of hand but that the two sides “take what is usable out of SALT
11” as the basis for renewed discussions or as an interim agree-
ment, while they seek significant reductions in SALT III.

But if his approach was sounding more pragmatic, his logic
had not altered. He remains convinced that the leverage of Ameri-
can industrial might, technological ingenuity, and economic flex-
ibility will ultimately cause the Kremlin to reconsider and raise its
own policies as it faces the prospect of being outrun in a new arms
race of the 1980s as it was in the moon race of the 1960s. He has
been told by his advisers that the Soviet leaders have already
squeezed their consumers and their economy to the limit so that
he believes there is no real slack in the Soviet economy to throw
more resources into an accelerated arms competition.

“I don’t know whether the Soviets will ever sincerely share our
aspirations for strategic stability, and our desire to reduce nuclear
armaments,” Reagan said late last summer. “I don’t know
whether they will ever be willing to moderate arms competition in
favor of cooperative arms limitations. But I believe we have given
them little incentive to do so. . . . We must convince them that
their ambitious strategic goals must be lowered because the cost of
pursuing them is too high and the chance of success too low.”

A certain toughness and demonstrated willingness to unleash
American technology in the face of the threatening Soviet arms
buildup is sometimes necessary. But it is easy to overdo. To some
outsiders, Reagan’s hardline rhetoric sounds like a formula for
sidetracking effective arms negotiations or at least leaving them in
suspended animation for a year or two, or maybe more. Early in
the campaign, close Reagan associates were quite comfortable
conceding that it would be a year or two until meaningful arms

124

REAGANS IV'ORLO

negotiations began. The closer they got to Election Day, the
shorter their lime frame became.

To ease voters’ concerns, foreign policy aides like Richard
Allen drew a distinction between formal negotiations and “talks”
with the Russians. Talks, Allen contended, could start very early
and deal cot only with the arms race but such other crucial topics
as avoiding accidental conilicts around the world. Moreover, the
Reagan high command envisages fairly regular high-’level —
though not summit — meetings with the Russians and plans to
upgrade the importance and functions of the American Ambassa-
dor in Moscow as a channel for communicating with the
Politburo.

Nonetheless, Reagan himself seems to feel that it will take
time for the Soviets to adjust to his view of the world and bis way
of doing business. They will choose to be more flexible, he con-
tends. only when confronted with the hard reality of renewed
American determination and military readiness to protect vital in-
terests and allies abroad. And for all bis pre-election protestations
about not wanting a showdown, (here is a hint that he believes
that it will take some test of strength to alter Soviet calculations.

125

VIII

The Final Campaign

Adam Clymer

Ronald Reagan exited stage right in >976, hailing the ver>' conser*
vative party platform that bad been conceded to his supporters by
President Gerald Ford’s forces as a “banner of bold unmistake-
able colors with no pale pastel shades.” His next entrance was
clearly a move to the middle, if not in substance, then certainly in
tone. By the time he announced his candidacy for the Republican
presidential nomination formally on November 13, 1979, he was
courting party moderates, putting up with some criticism from his
own right, and looking forward, perhaps a bit too soon, to the gen-
eral election. Explaining bis candidate's rather bland announce-
ment speech that night, Reagan’s press secretary, James Lake, of-
fered the candid explanation, “You use angry words, maybe, to
gel nominated, but not to get elected.”

Reagan’s path from the Kansas City Convention Center in
August 1976 to the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria in New
York City in 1979 was rather simple, and rather obvious. After a
light schedule of campaigning in the fall of 1976, one which was
aimed more at helping conservative Republicans and extolling the

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

platform’s virtues than at allout assistance for Ford, Reagan went
back to writing a syndicated newspaper column, making radio
commentaries, and speaking at conventions and Republican Party
functions. “He was doing the very thing one would do if one were
running full-time, having his options open. Nothing was certain,
but he was very robust and physically young for his age,” said his
friend, William French Smith, a Los Angeles attorney who has
been part of Reagan’s inner circle since Reagan first got into poli-
tics.

But there was one special step he took, creating a political ac-
tion committee out of leftover 1976 campaign funds (money that
came in too late to be used that year and that Reagan could le-
gally have pocketed and paid taxes on). He put about $1 million
into the organization, run out of a small office in Santa Monica,
California, which helped Republican candidates, mostly conserva-
tives, and put out a sharp-tongued newsletter that kept Reagan in
touch with his faithful supporters. It was named Citizens for the
Republic, using the initials CFTR after an initial choice of CFR
outraged some on the right because it reminded them of the
dreaded Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1977 he sounded off against the Panama Canal treaties,
going on national television to oppose them, but it was not a full-
time preoccupation. They were ratified the next year anyway,
though in the process Reagan’s closest friend in elective politics,
Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, developed a reputation in Wash-
ington for leading the opposition to the pacts with dignity and
without demagoguery, a reputation that enhanced his ability to
sell the Reagan candidacy among his colleagues.

In 1978 he campaigned hard for Republicans, even such mod-
erates as Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois. But talk that he was
moderating his views and concern about his age — he would be
sixty-nine less than three weeks before the 1980 New Hampshire
primary — served as an excuse for one challenge, the candidacy of
Representative Phihp M. Crane, a handsome, very conservative
Illinois Republican who said on August 2, 1978, that he was run-
ning but promised to drop out if it ever seemed to him he was en-

128

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

dangcring a true conservative’s chance of winning the nomination.
(In fact. Crane’s scattering of support in the 1980 Iowa caucuses
may have been enough to deny Reagan victory there, but Crane
did not drop out until Reagan’s nomination was all but certain
two months later.)

In 1979 Reagan first set up an cxploratoiy committee, one of
those political fictions that lets money be raised and spent without
subjecting (he would-be candidate to real scrutiny. In Reagan’s
case, it also permitted his radio broadcasts to continue without
hindrance from the equal-time rule. Reagan held back from say-
ing very much that was new or exciting, telling an interviewer
'“you have to ration your ammunition.-* He kept up his schedule of
speeches around the country, combining those banquet affairs
with political meetings and attracting local headlines with his
bluntly phrased views, such as the comment, after the murder of
(he United States ambassador(o Afghanistan, (hat “I’m hegioning
to wonder if the symbol of (be United States pretty soon isn't
going to be an ambassador with a flag under his arm climbing into
the escape helicopter."

If he made one significant speech before November 13, it was
a San Diego address in September rejecting the new Strategic
Arms Limitation Treaty, a speech in which he argued that the
treaty was flawed because it did not provide for reduction in arras,
and did not secure the United States adequately. Its bottom-line
opposition was what his conservative constituency demanded. But
the tone was calm and reasoned. There was no ideological raw
meat in it.

Most of the 1976 campaign team was back for 1980, talking
confidently to reporters about bow this time they would really
have time to plan a campaign right. John P. Sears was traveling
the country, preaching Reagan’s virtues to the nonbelievers, mod-
erate Governors such as William G. Milliken in Michigan or
James A. Rhodes in Ohio. Old supporters had been signed up
again, pros such as Gerald Carmen in New Hampshire, and some
new friends had been found. The most prominent of them was
Drew Lewis, the former Pennsylvania state Republican chairman

129

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

who had held the line for Ford there in 1976 after the Schweiker
gambit, but signed on with Reagan in early 1979.

But the 1979 Reagan campaign looked better from afar than
at close range. Despite constant promises, nothing much was hap-
pening on developing the detailed positions on issues that every-
one agreed Reagan needed. The SALT speech was an exception to
that pattern, with a lot of effort going into briefing Reagan before
the speech was written. Geographically, the campaign was split
between the east and west coasts, with Sears dividing his time be-
tween Los Angeles and Washington, where Charles Black headed
up the field operation. And, with Sears in charge, frictions devel-
oped that led first to the departure of Lyn Nofziger, Reagan’s
longtime press aide who was unaccountably put in charge of fund
raising, and then of Mike Deaver, another old hand who crossed
Sears. David Keene, who worked the Southern states in 1976,
never joined the 1980 effort, choosing instead to serve as political
director for George Bush, a position better than he could have had
with the Reagan campaign.

Still, the campaign suffered no significant setbacks in 1979.
Other candidates sought to win headlines and respectability with
victories, or even second-place finishes, in straw polls conducted
at party dinners, mostly in Iowa. They were looking for shortcuts,
t hinkin g that a straw poll in Ames in October 1975 had been the
key to Jimmy Carter’s rise to prominence. George Bush won a few
in Iowa, where he was making an intense effort. He won one at a
Maine Republican convention on November 3 and used a New
York Times headline on it to raise several hundred thousand dol-
lars. The real loser in that contest was Senator Howard H. Baker,
Jr., of Tennessee, who had scheduled his announcement and first
two days of campaigning to wind up with a victory in Portland.
Reagan did better two weeks later, taking his opening tour to Kis-
simmee, Florida, just across the road from Disney World, and
spoiling John B. ConnaUy’s hopes for a headline from a Florida
state Republican convention by w innin g handily. ConnaUy fin-
ished third, behind Bush, after spending more than $300,000 on a
contest in which no delegates were at stake.

J30

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

But the Reagan campaign was tiying too hard to stay above
the battle. The campaign lecalled, in its self-confidence, those
early 1972 bumper stickers that said, "President Muskie. Don’t
You Feel Better Already?" That attitude showed when he de-
clined an invitation to join other Republican candidates in Des
Moines on January 5, 1980, sixteen days before Iowa Republicans,
in precinct meetings, would begin the actual process of picking
delegates to the nominating convention in Detroit in July. The
others all turned up: Bush, Baker, Crane, Connally, Senator Bob
Dole of Kansas, and Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois.
Opinions differed about who actually won the debate, but it was
clear in the immediate reactions of Iowa Republicans, and then
from a poll by the Des Moines Register, that Reagan had lost by
his absence.

Ducking that debate, on the grounds that it would be divisive,
was not the on\y refiectioc of a iaVcc-ii*for-granted approach. Rea-
gan campaigned much less than his rivals did. Despite the conser-
vatism oflowa Republicanism, and the fact that his own days as a
sports broadcaster in Davenport and Des Moines left fond memo-
ries of “Dutch” Reagan, as he was known in the thirties, he lost to
Bush in those caucuses on January 21. Or at least he probably lost.
Computer failures and fatigue left the results incomplete, with
Bush narrowly ahead, when the Iowa Republican Party quit
counting.

There was a ragged air to the Reagan campaign in those days.
In a television interview broadcast Janhary 27, he suggested
blockading Cuba in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan. In Jacksonville, Florida, three days later, he said that while
he thought the spread of nuclear weapons to Pakistan was regret-
table, "I just don’t think it’s any of our business.” Aides tried to
get him to modify the position and arranged a special briefing or
reporters, but Reagan stuck to his guns. A few days later he to a
PoUsh-Italian joke to reporters. One of them had mvited him
tdh tee story, ’out tee reaCiiDn-wab’KoSffft.'tflryuM- . , ,

But there was also one key change of strategy. j/^New

to debate other candidates. He agreed to two e a e

131

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

Hampshire and one in South Carolina, That decision was prob-
ably necessary to his eventual nomination, but he was also greatly
assisted by the mistakes of his new rival. TTie Bush campaign was
not taking advantage of the former C.I.A. chiefs surprise victory
in Iowa. Polls did show Bush pulling ahead of Reagan in the opin-
ion of Republicans, but they rarely showed much in the way of
commitment from the Bush supporters. Bush did not use his
month of prominence, the period between the Iowa caucuses and
the New Hampshire primary, to give them any reasons why they
should be for him, except that he had the “Big Mo” or momentum
from Iowa and was “Up for the Eighties.” He jogged almost daily,
and indeed looked more vigorous than Reagan. But as long as
Reagan was not doddering, that was not enough. Reagan put in
hard campaign days of his own and celebrated his birthday with a
public flourish.

Debates in political campaigns have a way of freezing the ac-
tion. Their anticipation matters more than the controversies that
precede them, such as Reagan’s comments on Cuba, or his asser-
tions that there was more oil in Alaska than almost anywhere. He
was, in fact, gaining some ground with serious campaigning be-
fore the first of the New Hampshire debates took place on Febru-
ary 20 in Manchester, featuring the Iowa cast, plus Reagan. He
made a strong impression, defending Republican concern with
“single issues” such as gun control and abortion as an “expression
of a discontent on the part of the people, a feeling that the old
traditional values upon which our civilization is built are fading
away.” Later polling suggested strongly that Reagan had won, but
at the time most newspaper and television reporters thought no
one had come out that clearly ahead or behind.

There was no such uncertainty about the second one, on Feb-
ruary 23 in Nashua. Reagan and Sears changed the political land-
scape and made a fool out of Bush. Reagan had agreed to debate
Bush, plainly his main rival by then, alone in Nashua just three
days before the first primary on the mainland (Bush had prevailed
a few days earlier in Puerto Rico, but nobody cared). The other

132

THE FINAL CAMTAlCN

five candidates complained bitterly, saying they were being un-
fairly excluded from a critical event in a critical state.

The New Hampshire primary is an odd institution, taking
place in a state dominated by an intensely right-wing newspaper,
The Manchester Union-Leader, and one which has a remarkable
dissimilarity to the nation as a whole, since it is populated almost
entirely by whites and lacks a single big city. Still, not since the
primary was initiated in 1952 has anyone been elected President
without having won in New Hampshire (though some have been
nominated and then lost the general election). The event gets vast
television coverage that sets the tone for much of the campaign to
follow. It has an impact far beyond the twenty-two Republican
delegates it elects, or 1.1 percent of those who would participate at
the convention in Detroit.

The other candidates succeeded in getting the Federal Elec-
tion Commission to decide that holding the debate would amount
to an illegal campaign contribution if the Nashua Telegraph went
ahead with it as planned. So Reagan agreed to pay S3, 500 to rent
the high school where it was held, and Sears made sure the other
candidates would be available. Then Reagan invited them to join
In. Everybody came to Nashua wondering what was going to hap-
pen, and candidates, campaign managers, and hundreds of report-
ers milled around the high school in confusion. The newspaper in-
sisted on keeping the other candidates out, and Bush said he was
obliged to stick to bis commitment to the paper, whose manage-
ment was close to Hugh Gregg, a former Governor and Bush’s
campaign manager.

So Reagan marched into the ball with four other candidates in
low, Connally was away campaigning in South Carolina. The
Telegraph's editor insisted the others could not speak, and tried to
cut off Reagan’s microphone when he began to explain the situa-
tion to the confused audience. In one of those moments of politi-
cally perfect exasperation (such as the “There you go, again’* put-
down of President Carter e^gbt months later in tbeir ohly debate
in Cleveland), Reagan pushed on and declared, “I paid for the mi-

133

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

crophone, Mr, Green." He then told the audience he wanted the
others in, but the newspaper did not want them, and he had de-
cided to go ahead because the audience was waiting. That done,
the others left to hold a joint press conference in which they at-
tacked Bush for presumption and said he was dividing the party.
Dole said they had been treated like “second class citizens.” Baker
contended Bush’s actions “diminished our chances” to beat the
Democrats.

It hardly mattered that Reagan easily bested the flustered
Bush in the debate itself He came across as forceful, decisive, and
concerned about others. Bush came across as stiff and legalistic.
And it mattered not at all that the editor’s name was Breen, not
Green.

February 26 was a crucial day in the Reagan campaign, but
not just because of the primary. In the late afternoon Sears was
fired, and Black and Lake went with him. Reagan was persuaded
that Sears was not managing the campaign, whatever his talents as
a strategist. Laxalt and Edwin Meese, III, his chief of staff while
Governor of California, were the key movers in this coup, a suc-
cessful counterattack to a move to get rid of Meese. The public ex-
planation leaned heavily on the dangerous pace at which the cam-
paign had been spending money, a serious problem because of the
S18 million Federal spending limit. But there was plainly an un-
dertone of opposition to Sears both from old retainers of Reagan
and from conservatives who still resented the Schweiker move in
1976. Many of them said proudly the next day that without Sears
around it would now be easier to count on conservative support.

A few hours later it was clear that Reagan had won a landslide
victory in New Hampshire, that Bush’s soft support had evapo-
rated in the last few days. A Aew TorA: Times/CBS News Poll
made it clear that the Nashua events greatly accelerated Reagan’s
gains. The Californian got 50 percent of the votes, Bush only 23
percent.

Several months later, the ousted Lake would observe that after
New Hampshire Reagan w'on the nomination “on automatic

134

THEnNAUCAMPAJQH

pilot.” It worked out pretty much that way in the end, but there
was some turbulence along the wTiy. First, it was not clear whether
the new campaign team, headed by William J. Casey, a New York
Republican of Reagan's age, and by Meese, had the skills of Sears
and Black, especially the ability to respond to suddenly develop-
ing problems.

The Sunday morning after the New Hampshire primary it
looked as if they might have to. Former President Gerald R. Ford
gave an interview to The ffew York Times in which he invited the
Republican Party to ask him to get into the race. Ford said he had
been privately urged by scwal party leaders to get in, though he
would not name them. (In late October he said Governor Rhodes
of Ohio had been one of them.) He said Reagan could not win the
general election because he was “perceived as a most conservative
Republican.”

“A very conservative Republican,” he said in the interview in
his home in Rancho Mirage, California, "can’t win in a national
election.”

While Reagan gamely said he would welcome Ford into the
race, his stalT was worried. It was very late to try, because many
filing dates for primaries that elected delegates to the Republican
National Convention had already passed. But they worried that
Ford could put support and money together in a hurry and out-
spend them by a wide margin, even winning California’s winner-
take-all primary.

There was nothing they could do but sit and wait. Ford con-
sulted everywhere he went, but found that the support he hoped to
hear was inaudible. Rhodes, greatly impressed when Reagan
crushed Connally in the South Carolina primary March 8, then
urged the former President not to make himself look siliy by a
foolish quest. On March 15, after a tearful meeting at Rancho Mi-
rage, Ford announced he would not run.

The rest of the primary campaign was basically uneventful.
Bush heat Reagan in Pennsylvania, came surprisiagly close in
Texas, and then beat him in Michigan in May. But the night of the

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

Michigan primary, to Bush’s dismay, the television networks an-
nounced that Reagan already had enough delegates to be nomi-
nated.

Still, even if he was winning, and occasionally attracting the
votes of blue-collar workers and nominal Democrats in states like
Illinois and Wisconsin, he was rarely exceeding 50 percent of the
vote. Reagan was winning, comfortably enough to have no real
worry about getting nominated. But he was reaching out in only a
limited way. In particular, he was not winning votes in the tradi-
tional Republican suburbs. Bush, who was much more like the in-
habitants of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or Birmingham, Michi-
gan, than Reagan, was getting their votes.

But Reagan was winning, with an approach that said the na-
tion’s most troubling problems — inflation, energy, the hostages
in Iran, even the weakening of family ties — could be solved, rela-
tively easUy. About the only consistent specific was his call for 10
percent Federal income tax cuts in each of the next three years.
Generally, his prescription, again and again, was for government
to get out of the way. In Greensburg, Pennsylvania, on April 10,
he talked about energy in the same way he talked about other
issues, and asked rhetorically, “Does it take a genius to figure out
that the answer to our having all we need and no more being de-
pendent on OPEC is to turn the energy industry loose to produce
all the natural oil and the natural gas that is to be found here?”
Inflation, he had insisted in Amarillo, Texas, the day before, and
repeated wherever he went, was caused by government spending.
“Government causes inflation. We’ve got to mak^ the government
make it go away.”

Although there were decisions to be made about how to ex-
pand the staff, and plans to start making for the fall, by the time
June 3 came, signaling the end of the primaries, there was only

one important decision to be made that had a deadline on it the

choice of a vice-presidential candidate. Again, as in 1976, Reagan
approached it with little obeisance to tradition. In 1976, the
Schweiker ploy had been a gamble of necesaty. In 1980, the Ford

136

THE FWAl CAI«>A10N

Opening always had a perfectly safe fallback position in the even-
tual choice of Bush.

It was a bold idea, to be sure, lo get a former President to
agree to run for Vice-President, especially after he had considered
running against Reagan for the nomination himself. Reagan
plainly beUeved that Ford would give him the best chance of win-
ning, a view his poUtaker, Richard Wirthlin, and many of his
other advisers shared.

To get him. Reagan tried to overcome the former President’s
fears about demeaning his former office with the trivialities of sec-
ond place. He tried to offer Ford real power, a supervisory role at
the White House over some of the functions of government. There
remain some disagreements about what went on in Detroit on
July 16. The basic dispute is over how much the Ford people,
especially Henry A. Kissinger, the former Secretary of State,
asked for and how much Reagan’s negotiators offered without
being asked. But none of those arguments, even if the record is
ever completed, reach to what Reagan’s bottom line would have
been (or Ford’s either).

At the least, the whole exercise displayed a remarkably naive
hopefulness about deciding very deep questions regarding the
heart of the Federal government on a preposterously short timeta-
ble. It had one significant side effect, that of burying Ford's
doubts about Reagan and lifting his level of trust to the point
where he campaigned continually for Reagan in the fall. (Ford’s
disdain for Carter played perhaps an even greater role in that ef-
fort, but he cheerfully disavow^ his previous criticisms of Rea-
gan as someone with a “penchant for offering simplistic solutions
to hideously complex problems.”) Ford’s altitude about the failed
efforts in Detroit, in retrospect, is that everything really worked
out quite well with the eventual choice of Bush. He said of Rea-
gan’s initiative, “I don’t fault him for wanting to try, I think it
shows some innovativeness. He made a very good faith effort. But

hours in a convention atmosphere was just too much.”

137

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

This initiative, and the Schweiker move too, are interesting
and perhaps significant because they seem to reflect the approach
of a politician who came to his trade rather late in life, wit ou
having been brought up to believe that there were unbreakable
taboos in poUtics. “Certainly he has a respect for tradition, said
William French Smith, “but not for tradition’s sake. If t^iere is
some good reason to depart, he says, ‘Well, why not? r, as
Sears put it, “If you came to him with a different idea, e never
told you, ‘Things just aren’t done that way.’ He asked you to ex-
plain, and if your idea was convincing, he would buy it.”

The vice-presidential confusion, with messages gomg bacK
and forth from the top floor to the one below in the gliste^g
modem Detroit Plaza Hotel (“Henry Ford’s bowling tropdy,
some Detroiters call it), and all manner of rumor on the conven-
tion floor Wednesday night, at least brought the thirty-second Ke-
pubUcan National Convention to life. There was Ford, talkmg
with Walter Cronkite about a “co-Presidency.” Any number o
lawyers, from William French Smith to Ford’s own ally, John u.
Marsh, were dealing with the constitutional issue °f
mates resident in the same state. Some Reagan aides, like o -
ziger (who had returned as press secretary), were afrai t a
Meese and Wirthlin were being tricked by Kissinger. Bush waite
gamely at another hotel, the Pontchartrain, and then, to snr
prise, got the word. Laxalt, who wanted Ford but considere
self a good second choice, exploded when told the decision
been made for Bush and didn’t bother to listen to ®

ceptance address the next night. The Chicago Sun-Times ea
proclaiming the Ford decision to accept became a collectors i em.
The New York Times simply held its second edition press r^ un
things became clear, as they did when Reagan brought us o
the hall, introduced him as his running choice, and atteste to

belief in the platform. ir ■ 1

Otherwise, the convention had some right-wing self-m u
gence with a platform that dropped forty years of more or ess
consistent support of the Equal Rights Amendment and favored a
constitutional amendment prohibiting abortions, along with Fe

138

THE FWAL CAMPAIGN

cral judges who were against them. It called for repeal of the 55-
mile-per-hour speed limit, and hailed the private automobile as a
vital symbol of “personal mobility and freedom.” But at the same
time its economic policy was decidedly more progressive, more
concerned with unemployment in particular, than most such
documents.

Reagan’s acceptance address, capably delivered, had almost
no lines in it that were faintly memorable. He began with a pledge
of support for equal rights for women (but not the amendment)
and ended up quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt (on reducing
the size of the Federal government). It was good politics, and good
television, but it was still the Wednesday night circus that recalled
H.L. Mencken, writing in 1924: “There is something about a na-
tional convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a
hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it’s bard
upon both the cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it
is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing
heartily that all the delegates were dead and in bell and then sud-
denly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodra-
matic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposter-
ous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.”

It is easy to exaggerate the importance of anyone’s strategy in
assessing the outcome of the 1980 presidential election. It was not
decided by Carter’s campaign mistakes or by Reagan’s brilliance,
much less that of their ad men. pollsters, and other advisers, no
matter how important those wortWes think themselves.

The simple fact is the nation bad an unpopular Democratic
President, whose accomplishments lay in areas where no votes
were to be found (the Panama Canal Treaties, or even the Camp
David Agreement) and whose failures, especially unemployment,
most hurt the Northern, big-city voters without whom no Demo-
crat can expect to win. He never found a way to concede failures
in his first term, and while be groped for ways to convey a vision
for the future, it always sounded more like a blueprint than a vi-
sion. He had come through a bitter fight for his nomination with-

139

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

out ever conceding enough to the losers to win their allegiance.
They came back, by and large, but to beat Reagan, not to win for
Carter. He had the odd feature of John B. Anderson’s independ-
ent candidacy to contend with, too, and it appeared that Anderson
drew more support from potential Carter voters than from those
who might have been Reagan’s. The Republicans were better or-
ganized than the Democrats in much of the country, and took ad-
vantage of the quirks of the Federal election law to spend more
money. Most of all, the electoral vote charts made it clear all
along that Carter had to win more of the close states with big
chunks of electoral votes than did Reagan.

The Reagan strategy really required a steady, calm approach
in which, despite all the criticisms that were heard about the folly
of “sitting on a lead,” it made sense to do pretty much just that,
even when the lead looked very narrow in terms of national polls.
It was a very slow-moving campaign, in which both vote percent-
ages and perceptions of candidates hardly changed from Labor
Day to late October. The public seemed anything but delighted
with its choice of candidates. But Reagan (“the ultimate, laid-back
Californian,” as David Keene once called him) had the personal-
ity to stick with imexciting advice and win with it.

The first element of that approach involved not saying any-
thing stupid, not giving the Carter side a chance to label the chal-
lenger as too dumb or too ignorant for the job he sought. Reagan,
whose 1976 campaign was doited with observations better left un-
said, had avoided this problem pretty well in 1980. There was a
period in April when he couldn’t seem to get facts straight on such
matters as the GI Bill of Rights, but it all seemed rather triv ial

In August, however, Reagan kept saying awkward things. As
Bush was dispatched to China in a move to show the Chinese that
they could live with conservative Republicans who had opposed
the terms on which fixll diplomatic relations were established by.
Carter in 1978, Reagan began emphasizing how highly he re-
garded Taiwan and talked of reestablishing “official” relations
with that island. Then, attending a born-again Christians’ conven-
tion in Dallas, Reagan said at a press conference that legitimate

140

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

doubts had been raised about the Darwinian theory of evolution,
and he believed competing theories should be taught in the
schools, too. And in Chicago he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars
that the war in Vietnam was & “noble cause.” Reagan seemed
willing, in short, to chase after porcupines and revive old causes,
issues of 1924, 1952, and 1968 on which no one was going to vote
in 1980, unless they voted against a sixty-nine-year-old candidate
who seemed fascinated with old issues.

Perhaps even more important than any direct negative reac-
tion to these comments was that they were a distraction. If there
was one sure way to beat Jimmy Carter, it was to keep attention
focused on the economy. In August Reagan didn’t do that.

But in August it may not have mattered. Traditionally, a
presidential election begins in earnest on Labor Day. And on
Labor Day Reagan was at hts best at Liberty Stale Park in Jersey
City, talking about the greatness of America with the Statue of
Liberty and EUis Island behind him, and assailing Carter on the
economy. He did it, in particular, with one favorite line that
played on criticism of his caUiog the situation a ‘‘depression” the
week before. (He always attributed the criticism to Carter, in fact
it came from his own advisers.) Reagan said, “Recession is when
your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.
And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

That was the message on the evening television news, that and
a staged backyard barbecue svitb workers, some unemployed, in
Detroit But (hen at the Michigan State Fair he hit out at Carter
and said of the President's appearance that day in Tuscumbia,
Alabama, “He’s opening his campaign in the city that gave birth
to and is the parent body of the Ku Klux Klan.” Carter jumped
on the statement and so, spontaneously, did several Southern
Governors. Reagan apologized quickly, but it still seemed to more
than a few Southerners that he was willing to sacrifice their self-
esteem for votes somewhere else.

But that was the last time Reagan said something that really
hurt Mm He did proclaim the mr pollution problem under control
in Ohio, and then had his airplane diverted when returning to

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

California because of the worst smog in years. He said a number
of things that were just plain not true as the campaign went on,
such as denying that, he ever proposed making Social Security
voluntary or that he said nuclear nonproliferation was none of the
United States’ business. But he never really got in trouble again,
and one shrewd long-term observer of Reagan campaigns, Lou
Cannon of The Washington Post, pointed out that in every race he
had ever run, Reagan had begun badly.

The second key piece of the Reagan strategy was to deflect
Carter’s criticism, especially the line of attack that suggested Rea-
gan was, as the Californian once put it, some sort of “mad bomb-
er.” This was the single most clearly telegraphed punch of the
campaign, and, even so, it had an impact. In late October, a New
York Times/CBS News Poll found 39 percent of the public an-
swered yes when asked, “Do you think that if Ronald Reagan
were elected President in 1980, he would get us into a war?”

The Reagan forces fought this theme in various ways. Their
first television commercial of the fall had Reagan telling the cam-
era, “Of all the objectives we seek, first and foremost is the estab-
lishment of world peace.” Much later, he bought half an hour of
national television time to talk about foreign policy and defense
without seeming scary.

But probably their most effective weapon in deflecting this
criticism, and another, that Reagan was a racist, was Carter him-
self. The President overdid the attack. Once in a while, he did it
well, arguing that Reagan’s history of talking about using force in
one crisis after another was itself a threat to international stability.
But he got more attention when he went further, as when he told a
Torrance, California, audience on September 22 that by their
votes “you wiU determine what kind of life you and your families
will have, whether this nation will make progress or go backward,
and whether we have peace or war.” Reagan snapped back that
this attack was “beneath decency.”

But he did even better when Carter charged that Reagan’s
election could mean that “Americans might, be separated, blacks
from whites, Jews from Christians, North from South, rural from

142

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

urban." It wasn’t a tough part for a skilled movie actor, and Rea-
gan made the most of it when he replied, on all networks, “I can’t
be angry. I’m saddened that anyone, particularly someone who
has held that position, could intimate such a thing, and I’m not
asking for an apology from him. I know who I have to account to
for my actions. But I think he owes the country an apology.”

Reagan has a maimer that contradicts the simple text of many
of the things he says. He doesn’t look like a mad bomber. Ulti-
mately, the best device the Reagan forces had for countering the
warmonger attack was Reagan’s own manner in the October 28
debate. The percentage of Americans who said they feared war if
he was elected dropped from 39 before the debate to 31 percent
afterward.

A third element was to simply not panic. National polls
showed the race very close, and occasionally even put Carter
ahead. Inside the Reagan camp it was important to remember that
the election was not one national vote, but fifty-one separate elec-
tions choosing 538 electors. Their calculations of that electoral
vole never showed them behind. By and large they remembered
and did not react hastily.

What they feared most was an “October surprise” in foreign
policy, most of all the return of the hostages from Iran, an issue
that had served Carter well in the pnmaries. When something
seemed to be happening in mid-October, Reagan attacked Carter
for tolerating the continuing captivity, while other Republicans
laid a covering fire of accusations suggesting Carter was manipu-
lating the issue to win votes. Reagan generally took the high road,
proclaiming at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner m New York that,
whatever the political impact, “no one in America will rejoice
more than I” at their return. He consistently responded cautiously.
When an agreement on return appeared imminent on the last day
of the campaign, he prepared but did not use language for a na-
tional television speech that dealt with the issue. Instead, he stuck
fargefycj the economy.

But not panicking does not mean never changing what you’re
doing. For several weeks, it seemed that the Reagan campaign

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

thought it did. Then, in one week in mid-October, Reagan ^me
out with a promise to put a woman on the Supreme Court and
with the decision to debate Carter. Earlier, he had wanted a three-
way debate, including Anderson, for the same reason that Carter
had opposed one. His staff figured that Anderson would hurt Car-
ter most. When Reagan and Anderson debated in Baltimore on
September 21, Reagan profited most, not from any particular spe-
cific argument he made, but from his inspirational closing argu-
ment: “Some people in high positions of leadership tell us that the
answer is to retreat, that the best is over. For 200 years we’ve lived
in the future, believing that tomorrow would be better than today
and today would be better than yesterday. I still believe that. I’m
not r unnin g for the Presidency because I believe I can solve the
problems we’ve discussed tonight. I believe the people of this
country can.”

But the gains he made in terms of public impressions of him,
on qu,estions like whether he understood the complicated prob-
lems of the White House, had largely worn off by late October.
The agreement to accept a revised invitation from the League of
Women Voters, at the very moment when Carter’s advisers were
trying to devise a way to get out of their long-standing demand for
a one-on-one debate, was a matter of considerable argument
within the Reagan camp. Some saw no reason to take a chance.
Others, including Reagan in particular, thought there was no rea-
son to fear a debate with Carter.

All year long, the Carter forces had licked their chops in an-
ticipation of getting the President, with his command of detail, in
a debate with Reagan. They were sure he would seem more presi-
dential and Reagan would seem foolish. No matter that George
Bush and Howard Baker had thought the same. The night of the
confrontation in Cleveland, however, Carter had more details,
and more accuracy for that matter, but it was Reagan’s manner
that was plainly most effective. He sounded reasonable and in
control. Carter sounded anxious, pressing.

It was hardly a brilliant exposition of national policy. Carter's
citation of daughter .Amy as authority for the importance of nu-

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

clear weaponry as a campaign issue, and his metaphor of a conti-
nent-wide railroad train with fifty tons of TNT in each car for a
fifty megaton nuclear bomb was no less inspiring than Reagan’s
metaphor for joblessness; “If all the unemployed today were in a
single line, allowing two feet for each one of them, that line would
reach from New York City to Los Angeles, California.”

But debating points seem to matter less than impressions of
personalities in such debates. As in 1960 and 1976, the challenger
established himself in a debate with either the incumbent Presi-
dent or Vice-President.

Besides his style, Reagan did finally manage, after eight weeks
of mote failures than successes, to make the economy the issue. It
wasn’t that infiatioa and unemployment were not affecting
choices of presidential candidates. It is clear that they were, all
along, with Carter losing plenty of Democratic and Independent
voters who thought they were worse off financially than a year
earlier. But the other issues, the ones that helped Reagan and the
ones that hurl him, had rarely permitted economic questions to
lead the evening television news two days in a row. In the debate,
Reagan fixed that. Talking of the decision to be made on Election
Day, he said; “I think when you make that decision it might be
well if you could ask yourself, arc you better oft than you were
four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the
stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemploy-
ment in the country than there was four years ago?”

Reagan’s solutions, which Carter said were “completely irre-
sponsible and would result in inflationary pressures which would
destroy this nation," did not matter. He had invited the nation to
conduct a referendum on limmy Carter. One week later, the na-
tion took him up on it, and in a landslide Ronald Wilson Reagan
was elected the fortieth President of the United States.

145

Mr. Reagan
Goes to Washington

Hedrick Smith

On Eltction Day, Ronald ,^^1; voted on paper hai-
red shirt and she in i„ Pacinc Palisades is

lots in a neighbor’s home. Th” P j^dave that there are no
such a small and exclustve re -laces Lawrence Welk. the
public buildings to serve as ® P but Sylvester Stal-

band leader, voted a btt J, ahown up by the time

lone, the movie actor and direct ,

they left. W a haircut, shme. and manicure at

A bit later, Reagan had a hairw ,

DruckePs Barber Shop m ®'"' J and Mtke Deaver, two

salad, iced tea, and tee md " one began to talk of

of his closest poUUcal atdes. Wh knocked on wood or

victory or transition A' ““

refusedtojoinin,notwantmgtoj ^ Wirthlin, dropped by

In mid-afternoon hts pollster, electoral land-

Reagan’s house to give him 5t30 P.M., Pacifle time,

sUde that was in the maki^. Sh y Reagan

fairly soon after the East Court poUs had oeg

147

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

was in the shower when Jimmy Carter called. Deaver went to get
him. Reagan stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel
around himself as he took the phone to accept the personal con-
cession and congratulations of the thirty-ninth President of the
United States.

There, in that stark instant, this son of a shoe salesman from
Tampico, Illinois, this former actor whose greatest ambition in his
youth had been to become a play-by-play announcer for the Chi-
cago Cubs, was transformed into the most powerful political fig-
ure in the world. This was the climax of an unorthodox political
odyssey that began fifteen years earlier, when, at the age of fifty-
four, Reagan was persuaded by his California business friends to
enter the political arena and run for Governor. Three times he
tried for the Presidency, and twice he failed. Now, at the age of
sixty-nine, he had become the oldest man in American history to
stand at the threshold of that awesome office.

His electoral campaign was a stunning success. He had stolen
Jimmy Carter’s Southern base, smashed the incumbent’s expected
strength in the East, and taken command of the battleground
states of the Middle West. The entire West had gone for him, as
expected, to complete the rout. More than that, on Reagan’s coat-
tails and on the tide of an overwhelming vote of protest against
Carter and the Democrats, the Republican Party had sailed into
control of the Senate for the first time in twenty-six years, gaining
twelve new Senate seats plus thirty-three in the House of Repre-
sentatives. Although the Democrats still had control of the House,
Reagan could anticipate a conservative philosophical majority in
that chamber. In one day, the political map of America had been
redrawn, and Reagan now dominated the national landscape.

That night, at the victory celebration in the glittering ballroom
of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, the ebullient, smiling,
handsome new President-elect took his bows and shared some
thoughts about the Presidency.

“Do you know,’’ he told his delirious partisans, “Abe Lincoln,
the day after his election to the Presidency, gathered in his oftlcc
the newsmen who had been covering his campaign and he said to

148

MR. REAOAN COES TO WASHINGTON

them: *WeU, boys, your troubles are over now, mine have just
begun.* I thinh I know what he meant. Lincoln may have been
concerned in the troubled times in which he became President.
But I don’t think he was afraid. And I am not frightened by what
lies ahead and I don’t believe the American people are frightened
by what lies ahead. Together, we’re going to do what has to be
done. We’re going to put America back to work again.”

It was risky of Reagan to invite such exalted comparisons and
to set up such high expectations. For those with an car for Ameri-
can political history heard not only the voice of Lincoln but also a
subliminal echo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Reagan’s early
hero, telling a generation of downhearted Americans half a cen-
tury ago to take courage for, ”We have nothing to fear but fear
itself,” and of John F. Kennedy, in his high, choppy Boston ac-
cent, declaring in 1960 that it was high time to "get America mov-
ing again.”

Campaigning for the Presidency, Reagan often evoked FDR,
asking, in effect, to be seen as the leader of a new political revolu-
tion, the father of a conservative renaissance that will radically
alter the American concept of governing as Roosevelt did with the
New Deal. Repeatedly, Reagan had made the point that it is he
who kept the true faith with the original Roosevelt, who cam-
paigned in 1932 on the promise that government "costs too much”
and that “we must abolish useless offices,” while the Roosevelt
who look office changed course and launched an era of govern-
mental growth and activism that Reagan has spent the latter half
of his lifetime opposing.

Reagan’s supporters relish the notion that he could become a
conservative Republican version of Roosevelt. "I divide American
Presidents into journeymen Presidents who run the machine and
make it go, and symbolic Presidents who make radical changes,”
says Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, the new Republican
Majority Leader. “Ford and Carter, and even Truman and John-
son, were journeymen Presidents. Roosevelt and Nixon were sym-
bolic Presidents. Nixon made drastic changes in foreign policy. He
was trying to rearrange the world, alter the status quo. Roosevelt

J49

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

made fundamental changes in domestic affairs until World War II
came along. I think Reagan will be a symbolic President. I do
think he’ll make a sustained drive to change the size and cost of
government. I do think he’ll try to change the system of delivering
government services and sending Federal aid and categorical
grants to localities. His tax policy is fundamentally different. And
what also marks him as different is his ability to go to the people
and mobilize public support. Nixon didn’t have that, but Roose-
velt did.”

Some presidential scholars, such as James David Barber of
Duke University, discount Reagan’s upbeat speechifying as sim-
plistic and unrealistic cheerleading without solid purpose and vi-
sion. They expect him to be a fairly passive President, a throw-
back to the conservative, pro-business quietism of Warren G.
Harding or William Howard Taft. “He’s a ‘Music Man’ who goes
around encouraging people and who wants the affection of the
public,” says Barber. “His danger is that he’s so open to political
sharks.” However, other scholars, such as Tom Cronin of Colo-
rado College, sense a whiff of the Kennedy magic and glamour in
Reagan’s rhetoric and his political presence.

“John F. Kennedy had a way with words, a way of talking
about issues in simple terms that made them interesting and got
people to listen,” says Cronin. “Reagan has that knack, too. And,
like Kermedy, there is a contagious optimism about him. In the
presidential debates, Kennedy and Reagan didn’t really win on
substance, but on appearance. People liked Kennedy, and I have a
hunch they’ll like Reagan. He realizes there’s a morale problem in
this country and he addresses it. The country can be quite taken
by a guy who can give a fireside speech with a can-do spirit.”

Of course, no stereotype fits. Reagan is a composite of some of
his predecessors and something entirely new. He is closest of all to
Dwight Eisenhower in tone, style, and perhaps even outlook, for
both have brought to the Presidency the uncomplicated outlook of
Small-Town America, an unbounded faith in free enterprise, su-
preme confidence in the judgment of businessmen, and the citizen
politician’s disdain for the excesses of government.

/sn

MR. BEAOAKCOESro WASHINGTON

Like the heroic generaL Reagan tikes to set out the broad
philosophical lines of his administratton and to operate in the
lughly structured corporate s^le of a board chairman or a su-
preme commander making major decisions in the company of a
small group of close advisers, entrusting substantial power to key
Cabinet officers and aides and generally keeping himself above
the political fray of the moment

Nothing illustrates more convincingly Reagan’s willingness,
indeed his preference, for delegating executive authority to subor-
dinates than his entering into negotiations with former President
Ford at the Republican Convention last July for some kind of
“super Vice-Presidency” as an inducement to get Ford to join the
Reagan ticket. Ford's concept was that Reagan, as President,
would be the chief executive officer of the government, the final
authority who makes all the decisions, and that Ford, as Vice-
President, would be the chief operating oificer of the administra-
tion, implementing presidential decisions, supervising the White
House staff, and making government work.

In principle, the idea appealed to Reagan’s concept of execu-
tive organization as well as to his pragmatic political desire to
have (he strongest possible running mate. He showed common
sense when he balked at suggestions for shared powers that threat-
ened to dismantle his Presidency before it was won. But the whole
concept harked back (o Eisenhower’s method of parceling out im-
portant powers to principal advisers such as Sherman Adams, his
chief of staff, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who
often acted as his deputies with presidential authority.

Although no stepping-stone is an adequate test for (he White
House, Reagan seems as comfortable as Eisenhower with the fun-
damental, personal responsibility of the Presidency. He has never
appeared to strain himself, as Carter often did, but knowing him-
self, he projects an easy, natural, inner confidence in his own ca-
pacity for leadership. His roots, like Ike’s, are in the American
ieartlaDxL the farm counliy of the Middle West and those roots
are never very far from the surface. For all his Hollywood back-
ground and his coterie of millionnaire California friends, Reagan,

ISl

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

like Eisenhower, has the simple tastes, gee-whiz grin, and open
charm of the boy next door.

On camera or on the stump, Reagan can be magical in his ap-
peal. He projects as a highly moral, honest, sincere, and purpose-
ful citizen-politician. He exudes an air of simple virtue. His
aw-shucks manner and charming good looks disarm those who
from a distance have thought of him as a far-right fanatic. He
comes across as patently unmalicious, whatever he says. Face-to-
face with the the public, his ability to reduce problems to simple
propositions has common sense appeal. In that, he is like Eisen-
hower, even occasionally with Eisenhower’s scrambled syntax.

Politically, Reagan is straightforward, uncomplicated, and
even naive, though, as with Ike, there can be guile behind his
seemingly artless ways. Just as often, his open candor and his
naivete have gotten him into hot water. For example, his loose-
lipped directness on Vietnam and Taiwan gave him trouble dur-
ing the campaign, and he suffered political embarrassment by
having his negotiations with Gerald Ford rise and fall so dramati-
cally and publicly when a more calculating politician would have
kept that drama Wdden behind the scenes.

Reagan’s success, however, derives not from a great mastery
of political maneuvering and coalition-building through long
links to the fraternity of professional politicians. Like Eisenhower,
he has sound, quick political instincts; the appeal of political ama-
teurism and sincerity; and the ability to communicate over the
heads of other politicians to the people.

Initially, Reagan’s advisers intend him to set a fast pace in the
White House, in part perhaps to counteract the Eisenhower
stereotype. But temperamentally, Reagan seems far more inclined
to the modest pace of the Eisenhower Presidency than the throb-
bing programmatic activism of FDR or Lyndon Johnson.

Eager to offset public worries about his age, Reagan cam-
paigned long and hard from Labor Day to Election Day. As Gov-
ernor of California, he occasionally worked late with the Legisla-
ture, but his natural rhythm was the 9:00-to-5:00 day with lights
out around 1 1:00 P.M. — though the modem Presidency rarely

152

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

accommodates so light a schedule. Over time, Reagan paces him-
self carefully and makes most decisions quickly, without agoniz-
ing unduly over them. Unlike Carter, he leaves the details to
others and takes time to relax.

His style fits his outlook. Philosophically, Reagan’s view of
government turns on the libertarian axiom that the best govern-
ment is the one that governs least. One of the lines he delivered
most fervently and with greatest effect during the campaign was
the persistent pledge to “get government off the people’s backs.’’
Unabashedly, he says he admires not only Eisenhower but “Silent
Cal” Coolidge whose characteristically plainspoken motto for the
1920s was; “The business of America is business.”

“Many people have the erroneous impression that those two
spent mote time golfing and relaxing than being President,” Rea-
gan remarked to an interviewer last summer. “They forget to look
at the record of those years — prosperity, peace, and no inflation.
Maybe I can sum it up with the words in a little plaque on my
desk: ’You can accomplish much if you don’t mind who gets the
CTedit.' ”

On at least two critical points, Reagan differs with Eisenhow-
er. In the field of foreign policy, one gaping vulnerability of the
former California Governor is that he lacks the long wartime ex-
perience that won Eisenhower automatic public confidence in
matters of war and peace, that kept Eisenhower from entering the
first Vietnam War in 1954 when some Pentagon leaders were urg-
ing it, and that left Eisenhower permanently wary of the influence
of the military-industrial complex.

The other major difference is that Eisenhower was drafted
into politics as a national war hero at a time when the public
wanted the relief of normalcy. Reagan enters the President as the
spokesman for a political crusade at a time of national unease, of
public cynicism, and of uncertainty about whether this nation can
control its own destiny. With Iheir friendly Dutch uncle manner,
both Reagan and Eisenhower have been reassuring to the nation.
But Eisenhower had no personal cause and Reagan has been lead-
ing one for nearly two decades.

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

His purpose is to stir the sleeping giant of America back to a
sense of its manifest destiny, to oversee the restoration of an eco-
nomically robust and militarily sturdy nation active in the world
arena, and to rekindle the rawhide heroism and patriotic pride of
John Wayne. His strategy is to roll back the Federal establishment
with tax cuts, spending cuts, personnel cuts, and cutbacks in regu-
lations that he believes will release the productive energies of free
enterprise. His faith is that this nation can literally work its way
out of the debilitating inflation that has it in enthrall. His instinct
is to summon citizen task forces to fight the huge Federal establish-
ment with the zesty irreverence of the Boston Tea Party. It is a tall
order, many say unrealistically tall or ill-advised, but it is the vi-
sion that moves and animates Ronald Reagan.

“Many Americans today, just as they did 200 years ago, feel
burdened, stifled, and sometimes even oppressed by government
that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unre-
sponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems,” Reagan
said on the eve of his election, in one of his most eloquent cam-
paign speeches.

“I believe we can embark on a new age of reform in this coim-
try and an era of national renewal,” he went on, “an era that will
reorder the relationship between citizen and government, that will
make government again responsive to people, that will revitalize
the values of family, work, and neighborhood and that will restore
our private and independent social institutions. These institutions
always have served as both buffer and bridge between the individ-
ual and the state — and these institutions, not government, are the
real sources of our economic and social progress as a people.

“That’s why I’ve said throughout this campaign that we must
control and limit the growth of Federal spending, that we must re-
duce tax rates to stimulate work and savings and investment.
That’s why I’ve said we can relieve labor and business of burden-
some, uimecessaiy regulations and still maintain high standards of
environmental and occupational safety.

“That’s why I’ve said we can reduce the cost of government by
eliminating billions lost to waste and fraud in the Federal bu-

154

MR. REAOAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

reaucracy — a problem that is now an unrclcatiag national scan-
dal. And because we arc a federation of sovereign states, we can
restore the health and vitality of state and local governments by
returning to them control over programs best run at those levels of
government closer to the people. We can fight corruption while
we work to bring into our government women and men of compe-
tence and high integrity.”

Clearly, Reagan has his eye set on leading the Conservative
Reformation, the reversal of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s revolution-
ary New Deal, which Reagan himself once admired. Yet there is a
dilemma inherent in his assertion of presidential leadership for his
cause and the fierce individualism that permeates his thinking.
His philosophical impulse is to foster the centrifugal forces that
make national leadership so difficult today, but his political strat-
egy requires a single-minded discipline to follow policies — espe-
cially economic poUdes — that has hitherto proven impossible for
modem administrations and Congresses.

At the Republican Convention, Reagan touched upon a cen-
tral flaw in the American system that symbolically entrusts so
much responsibility (o one man at the apex of power but deliber-
ately hems him in with constitutional balances, compounded now
by the fragmentation of power in Congress and the more subtle
but no less palpable public distrust of authority which Reagan
himself has long articulated. In accepting his party’s nomination,
Reagan called upon the electorate to reject Jimmy Carter’s ‘‘Trust
me” government that “asks that we concentrate our hopes and
dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us.”
Reagan’s own view of government, be said much more vaguely,
‘‘places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values
that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs —
in the people.”

One fundamental test for Reagan will be how broadly or how
narrowly he interprets the people’s trust, how broadly or how nar-
rowly be governs. Will he nourish the powers of the Presidency by
reaching out continuously to broaden his .governing coalition or

J53

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

will he be pushed back into a New Rich narrowness that will
shrink his base? Will he adjust pragmatically to political realities
or break his lance on doctrinaire implementation of his pet ideas,
however impolitic? Will he prove firm enough to project a clear
and constant vision and yet flexible enough so that ideological ri-
gidity does not engender stalemates that jeopardize his major ob-
jectives?

It is tempting for the Reagan entourage and its right-wing co-
horts in Congress to claim an electoral mandate for a full menu of
conservative measures in every field. It is also tempting for them
to contend that Reagan’s lopsided electoral landslide and the
change of climate in Congress will enable them to roll over the
Democratic opposition, presumably made pliable by the resound-
ing defeats of prominent liberals such as Senator George McGov-
ern of South Dakota, the, 1972 presidential nominee; Senator
Frank Church of Idaho, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee; and half a dozen others. With a fifty-three to
forty-seven Republican majority in the Senate, the new adminis-
tration can look forward to working with such Republican conser-
vatives as Strom Thurmond of South Carolina at the head of the
SenateJudiciary Committee; Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the In-
telligence Committee; Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the Budget
Committee; Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the Agriculture Com-
mittee; and Jake Gam of Utah, the Banking Committee.

The liberal losses in the Senate and the addition of Republi-
can conservatives from Alabama, Idaho, Florida, Oklahoma, and
elsewhere have fueled euphoric talk about a tidal wave of conser-
vativism which gives the new President the political clout to do
pretty much as he pleases. But Reagan cannot afford the luxury of
such, an easy interpretation.

A closer look at the election returns reveals that his own popu-
lar vote total was 5 1 percent of the smallest turnout of voters in
terms of percentage since 1948 — 52.4 percent of the eligible elec-
torate. That makes Reagan the active choice of only 26.7 percent
of the adult population. His popular vote percentage was the sev-
enth lowest in twenty presidential elections in this century', and

156

MR. REAOAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

more than three out often who voted Republican in the presiden-
tial race told pollsters their primary motive was voting out Jimmy
Carter rather than voting in Ronald Reagan.

Moreover, the Democrats still have a fifty-one-votc margin in
the House and the Republican majority in the Senate is so slender
that Reagan will need the Republican moderates and sometimes
even party liberals in both houses to prevail on critical issues. His
shrewdest political advisers have not missed noting that important
Senate liberals survived in states such as California, Colorado,
Vermont, Oregon, and Maryland and new Republican moderates
won in Georgia. Indiana, Wisconsin, and Washington. In essence,
it was more a Republican party triumph than an ideological
sweep. Along with new, conservative committee chairmen in the
Senate, there are several other Republicans in important spots
with moderate social and political views: Charles Percy of Illinob
at the Foreign Relations Committee, Mark Hatfield of Oregon at
Appropriations, and Bob Dote of Kansas at Finance. Reagan can
neglect these Republican moderates, not to mention the Demo*
crats, only at his peril.

“If he can go to the people and mobilize them and reach out
and broaden his coalition, then he’ll do well,” commented How*
ard Baker, the Senate Republican leader. “But if I’m wrong about
him and it turns into crystalline conservatism, it won’t work." '

That is a point on which Reagan has had considerable tutor-
ing. During the campaign, Reagan's advisers urged him to show
compassion and moderation. He made a deliberate effort to soften
dogma and reach across party lines for support. “Our message will
be: We have to move ahead, but we’re not going to leave anyone
behind,” he declared in his speech to the Republican Convention.
“We Republicans believe it is essential that we maintain both the
forward jnomentum of economic growth and the strength of Ihc
safety net beneath those in society who need help.” Trying to ease
fears among women and the elderly that he would neglect them,
Reagan pledged to fight discrinunation against women and to
protect the integrity of the Sodal Security System.

Nonetheless, it was only natural for people to question how

157

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

much of this was political expediency in the heat of a tight cam-
paign and how much represented lasting moderation and compas-
sion. The real issue, however, may be less Reagan’s political
adaptability than the gaps in his life experience. For ironically,
consistent success and the ease with which he has moved through
life may have produced blind spots toward the disadvantaged that
underlie some of his most fundamental political attitudes and as-
sumptions.

Reagan has tasted some adversity, but little of his own mak-
ing. He has spoken movingly of his father’s drunkenness and of
learning one Christmas Day during the Depression that his father
had lost his job. He generally avoids mentioning that his first mar-
riage, to film star Jane Wyman, ended in divorce, and that he is
America’s first divorced President. He rarely alludes to the fact
that his grown children have clashed with him personally and
politically and have broken away from his traditional values to
pursue the very different and open lifestyles of the new genera-
tion.

Characteristically, Reagan himself has moved through life
achieving success fairly easily and without suffering the sting of
serious failure. Although his family beginnings were humble and
he had to hunt to get his first jobs, his initial screen test got him an
opening in Hollywood; and though he never became a top star, he
quickly established himself as a competent leading man. His
union leadership vaulted him into the world of Hollywood
moguls. Over the past three decades, he has accumulated wealth
and property and moved among the weU-heeled corporate execu-
tives and celebrities of southern California, rarely rubbing shoul-
ders for any period of time with less fortunate Americans.

Now there are some, including his former campaign manager,
John P. Sears, who fear that the surmy existence that Reagan
counts as such a blessing may prove a political handicap to him in
the Presidency. Their contention is that it deprives him of true em-
pathy for the other side of the tracks, the kind of instinctive under-
standing of the little people that builds credibility for a President,
helps forge a durable consensus, and moderates the impulse to-

158

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

ward rampant budget-cutting when it threatens to cause too much
social pain.

Nonetheless, in terms of political tactics, Reagan has proven
himself surprisingly flexible and open in spite of the dogmatic
ring to his rhetoric. In 1976, when Sears went to Reagan propos-
ing Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as the best possi-
ble running mate to lure needed delegates from Gerald Ford,
Reagan accepted without blanching at the liberalism of Schweik-
er’s record. The tactic did not work and Reagan took great heat
from unhappy conservatives, but he still reappointed Sears his
1980 campaign manager — until Scars’ tactics of keeping Reagan
under wraps in Iowa failed.

Again in 1980. when a new set of strategies came and told
Reagan that his old rival, Gerald Ford, and his more recent rival,
George Bush, had the kind of moderate images that could help
him most to broaden his appeal in the general election campaign,
Reagan swallowed his pride and tried first one and then the other.
He passed over his personal preference, the champion of the con-
servatives, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, a close friend and
longtime conservative ally.

That same pragmatic openness has carried into the early
phases of his administration, where he has resisted the pressures
of the New Right for ideological purity on key appointments. On
the day after the election, two prominent voices of the New Right,
Paul Weyrich, head of the Committee for the Survival of a Free
Congress, and Terry Dolan, Executive Director of the National
Conservative Political Action Committee, warned Bush to toe the
ideological line and called for the replacement of Senator Howard
Baker of Tennessee, another moderate, as the prospective Repub-
lican leader of the Senate. Evidently reflecting the view of some
ardent Senate conservatives, they caUed for Laxalt to be the new
leader.

However tempting that may have sounded to Reagan, he
chose shrewdly — with Laxalt’s wise encouragement — to back
Baker unequivocally. Within twcniy-four hours, Laxalt had said
he bad no intention of opposing Baker, and Reagan threw his

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

weight solidly behind the Tennesseean. At a Los Angeles press
conference on November 6, Reagan scotched any conservative
plans to unhorse Baker by observing that “I not only have confi-
dence in Howard Baker but I have been informed by members of
the Senate that there is no friction and there is no move going for-
ward to change in any way ... his position He will be the Ma-

jority Leader of the Senate.”

Alerted by the bad press and costly political insulation that
Jimmy Carter had built for his Presidency by initially surrounding
himself with a narrow circle of fellow Georgians, Reagan passed
the word in advance of the election through his longtime aide, Ed
Meese, that “the senior White House staff is not going to be nine
Californians.” By mid-November, Reagan had quickly made
good on that. He had named Meese to his top advisory position.
Counselor to the President, with Cabinet rank and authority over
the Domestic Council and National Security Council staffs at the
White House. But for White House Chief of Staff, Reagan picked
James A. Baker, III, a tall, amiable, fifty-year-old Texas lawyer
who had led Ford’s forces against Reagan at the 1976 Republican
Convention and Bush’s primary campaign against Reagan in
1980, before he joined the Reagan general election campaign in
the fall as a senior adviser.

Jim Baker, a tough-minded politician with Washington ex-
perience as Under Secretary of Commerce under President Ford
and a reputation for integrity and moderation, had impressed
Reagan and his wife, Nancy, as he personally coached Reagan for
the 1980 presidential debates and masterminded Reagan’s debate
strategy. Baker led the efforts to persuade Reagan to debate Car-
ter rather than trying to coast home on a shrinking lead, and the
debate paid handsome returns. Baker also scored points with Rea-
gan’s CaHforma entourage for his loyalty, his solid command of
campaign finance that left them in strong shape for the final push,
and his firm, decisive management of whatever fell under his tute-
lage. StUL the choice was unorthodox.

“Think of what that choice represents,” said one Easterner
who joined the campaign headquarters last summer. “It makes

160

MR. REAGAN GOESTO WASKfNGTON

Reagan the first President in years to pick a chief of staff who
doesn’t come from his home state or his oJd gang. It’s a very
healthy sign "

■_ In his transition to the White House, Reagan also endorsed
the decision of Mcese, his transition director, to strike a balance
between outspoken conservatives like William R. Van Cleave, a
hawkish defense specialist from the University of California; Lau-
rence Silberman, a San Francisco banker and former U.S. Ambas-
sador to Yugoslavia: and former officials with less controversial
reputations who gained Washington experience under the Nixon
and Ford administrations.

Among them were Caspar Weinberger, former Secretary of
Health. Education, and Welfare and Federal Budget Director;
Anne Armstrong, former U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain; Wil-
liam J. Casey, former Cbainnan of the Securities and Exchange
Commission: Gerald Parsky, a former Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury; Richard Shubert, a former Under Secretary of Labor;
Elizabeth Dole, a former Federal Trade Commissioner, Richard
E Wiley, former Chairman of the Federal Communications Com-
mission; and Richard Fairbanks and Stanton Anderson, two
Washington attorneys with xyhite House experience. Overall, it
was a far more experienced set of specialists than President Carter
bad called upon four years earlier.

The firet appointments signaled Reagan’s inclination to turn
to talent and experience rather than to ideological allies to staff
his government. Even on substance, he hinted at early flcxibUity.
When Republicans in the Jame-duck Senate began advocating
quick passage of a tax cut package differing from his own pet
proposals in content though not in size, Reagan responded posi-
tively. ‘Td be delighted to sec them do it,” he said.

All this is in keeping with Reagan’s record as Governor of
California. He campaigned as a missionary conservative but gov-
erned, some said, as a “closet moderate.” His longtime press secre-
laiy.. Ljvn Nofz^er^ onccjokiqglv called him “a Fabian conserva-
tive.”

Indeed, if Reagan’s eight yean as Governor of California are

J6I

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

any guide, he will suqjrise many voters as a more pragmatic and
moderate President than he advertised in his campaign. As Gov-
ernor, he had a bumpy beginning, gradually learned the art of
governance, and ultimately forged legislative compromises and
accepted ideological accommodations that could hardly have been
imagined during his first campaign. He promulgated huge tax in-
creases, protected social programs, doubled the state budget,
helped education, and signed a tough environmental control law
and a liberalized abortion law, all at odds with his stump rhetoric.
His welfare reform was a blend of his own bent for efficiency by
restricting eligibility and Democratic generosity in the form of
more liberal benefits for those who qualified. But philosophical
inconsistencies, in the name of realism, never troubled Reagan
then or since. He still feels he has a solidly conservative record,
and among his most proudly proclaimed achievements was his
S5.7 billion in tax rebates, mostly to local governments.

“There are some people who think you should, on principle,
jump off the cliff with the flag flying if you can’t get everything
you want,” he said, rebutting the criticism from the ideological
right. “If I found when I was Governor that I could not get 100
percent of what I asked for, I took 40 percent.” Often, he settled
for a good deal less, or reversed direction entirely.

Reagan has the capacity, once dissuaded from a long-held
view, to shift ground quickly and to extricate himself, sometimes
with a touch of humor that eases the political pain.

In California, he had campaigned vigorously against a state
withholding tax. On this key symbolic issue, he said, his feet were
set in cement. But in 1971 the state’s finances were in such dire
straits that his financial advisers informed him that the only way
to deal with the situation was a state withholding tax. Reagan
called an emergency session of the Legislature, and with grace and
a bit of self-deprecating humor, he proposed the withholding tax.
A faulty heating system made a racket at the press conference
where he was announcing his turnaround. The noise, he quipped,
was the soimd of the cement breaking around his feet. The audi-
ence roared. Later, the capital press corps made a gift to Reagan

J62

MR, REAOANGOESTO WaSHINOTOK

— a pair of his own brown shoes, obtained from his wife, set in
cement. For a long time he kept the memento in his office.

Similarly, he cut his political losses quickly last summer when
his effort to recruit Gerald Ford as his vice-presidential running
mate fell through late on the third night of the Republican Con-
vention in Detroit. Approving a consensus of his political advisers,
he moved quickly to choose George Bush. Then, following his
own political instincts against the advice of his convention floor
manager, Bill Timmons, and his friend. Senator Paul Laxalt, he
broke political tradition and made a midnight appearance at the
convention hall, which had excitedly been awaiting word of a
Reagan-Ford ticket. Reagan announced that his choice was Bush.
His action stunned the hall, but it foresiallcd an insurrection by
disgruntled conservatives and prevented overnight headlines fo-
cused on the unhappy ending of bis unprecedented negotiations
with Ford over the Vice-Presidency.

Surprisingly, perhaps. Reagan has never been a politician’s
politician with a love of legislative maneuver. He’s an orator, a
standard-bearer, a performer who thrives on playing to the crowds
and a storyteller who enjoys getting off a good joke or a one-liner.
But he is not by habit or instinct a member of the fraternity of
politicians. In California, be did not seem to enjoy the horse trad-
ing, back slapping style of state house politicians nor did he fre-
quent their haunts. Aides had to prod him to show up at political
receptions to break the ice. For a long time, he was a loner, much
like Jimmy Carter.

“The first year or two of Reagan’s administration in Califor-
nia was a disaster,” recalled Bill Baglcy, a moderate Republican
who served one term as Assembly Speaker. “The Reagan crowd
ran against the government and against Sacramento and they
came in on their white .horses and railed against the Legislature.
The people around the Governor didn't like us. In their view, we
were the hacks he’<t run agamst and we didn’t like being treated
that way.”

But ultimately Reagan began to mix a bit, and, at the start of
his second term, he struck a deal with Bob Moretti, the Demo-

163

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESmENT

cratic Speaker of the new Assembly, on the welfare reform pro-
gram. That proved a model for numerous legislative compromises
that served him well. And like Jimmy Carter, Reagan told audi-
ences during the campaign that he felt he could handle Congress
because he had successfully handled his state Legislature back
home.

Actually, Carter once told a joke on himself for being so
naive. He said he’d been advised by friends to treat Congress like
the Georgia Legislature. ‘T tried it,” he said, “and they treated me
like the Governor of Georgia.” In other words, he got nowhere.

There is a considerable difference between Reagan’s experi?
ence in California and Carter’s in Georgia, however. Cahfomia is
a vigorous two-party state with a nearly fuU-time Legislature,
whereas Carter had to deal essentially with a one-party, part-time
Legislature. In six of his eight years, Reagan was working with a
Legislature controlled by the opposition party, which is what he
now faces in one house of Congress. Moreover, as one of the most
liberal states in the union, California was a setting where Reagan,
even as a conservative, had to accept many social programs on a
scale unheard of in Georgia. Nevertheless, he stiU faces a far more
potent and diverse power structure in Congress t han he dealt with
in his home state.

Republican control of the Senate will help Reagan muster ma-
jorities in that chamber. In the House, he enjoys a philosophical
majority of conservatives. At least initially, the mainstream
Democrats, sensitive to the election returns, may let Reagan
largely have his way so that he cannot go to the voters with the
complaint that the Democrats are obstructing his programs and
defying the popular wilL

The early maneuvering of the new Congress may have been
foreshadowed by the tactics of the House Budget Committee in
the 1980 lame-duck sessioiL By writing some of Reagan’s tax cut
pledges into the committee’s budget resolution but leaving it up to
Reagan to make the actual cuts, the Democrats felt they saw an
advantage in putting the monkey on Reagan’s back to deliver on
his campaign promises. Some are skeptical that he can do it But if

764

MR. REAOAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

this tactic prompts Reagan to cut too deeply into popular sodal
programs or he presses ahead loo rapidly with plans to dismantle
the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, that
may galvanize the Democrats faitiy quickly and test how well
Reagan copes with determined legislative opposition.

Mindful of his need for suppoit from across the political aisle,
Reagan began disarming potential adversaries by talking right
after the election about the need for bipartisan foreign policy. He
named three Democratic conservatives. Senator Henry M. Jack-
son of Washington, the recently defeated Senator Richard Stone
of Florida, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Georgetown University polit-
ical scientist, to his foreign policy advisory board. On his first
political Visit to Washington, before Thanksgiving, he made a
point of meeting with Democratic Congressional leaders as well as
Republicans, a sign that he recalled from his Sacramento days the
political benefits of courting the opposition as well as his own par-
tisans.

Paradoxical as it sounds, Reagan may have won too much of a
good thing when the Republicans gained control of the Senate. He
cannot blame the Democrats for any failures in that body, and it
will take considerable dexterity to mold fifiy-ihree Republicans
from all points on the ideological spectrum into an efTectivc work-
ing majority for his principal objectives.

So long have the Republicans been in the minority that the
upstart habits of dissent and opposition may die hard. A few liber-
als and moderates, like Senator Hatfield of Oregon, sent out early
signals that they were unhappy with the Reagan approach on de-
fense and budget-cutting. But initially Republican conservatives
may be more of a headache, by going off on tangents and firing
up divisive controversies over what, for Reagan, as President, will
be side issues.

No sooner had the election teiums been tabulated, for exam-
ple, than conservatives like Strom Thurmond, Jake Gam, and
Orrin Hatch were sounding off with the enthusiasm of rookies in
spring training about the need to restore capital punishment and
school prayers and to abolish guaranteed wage rates at Federal

/6S

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

construction sites. Thurmond and Jesse Helms of North Carolina
pushed through the Senate a rider on an appropriations bill to bar
the Justice Department from entering suits to use busing to im-
prove racial balance in schools. That set off squawks from Repub-
lican as well as Democratic liberals that affirmative action pro-
grams would be in jeopardy from the new right-wing strength.

The list of potentially emotional side issues is almost endless.
And if Reagan gets dragged into such political byways, he may
find that he has wasted his early political capital and that his
major initiatives are in trouble because he has alienated either his
conservative hardcore or the moderates whose support is vital on
the big votes.

Much of the blueprint for the Reagan Presidency is borrowed
from his California years. Reviving themes from 1966, Reagan
has pledged to freeze government hiring and to squeeze 7 to 10
percent in savings from the Federal budget over four years
through greater efficiency. As in California, he has moved to set
up citizen task forces to scour the Federal system for mismanage-
ment, waste, and fraud, and he immediately appointed his former
California Finance Director, Caspar (“Cap the Knife”) Weinber-
ger, to use his cutting shears on the 1981 Federal budget.

As a campaigner, Reagan loved to point out that California is
the world’s seventh largest economy and that, as Governor, he oc-
cupied the second biggest executive job in American politics. But
there are enormous differences between Sacramento and Wash-
ington. In California, Reagan did not have to deal with foreign af-
fairs, manage the defense establishment, or take responsibility for
the health of the national economy, his three most consuming
tasks as President. In part, at least, his state’s prosperity and his
tax rebates were a dividend of booming times that owed little to
his own policies and that no longer exist to simplify the policy
choices he must make as President. Even if the economy has a
mild upward blip as he takes office, it is now up to Reagan and his
economic advisers to engineer sustained growth in order to do all
that he has promised.

766

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

The sheer sprawling size and complexity of the Federal estab*
lishment and the competing interests of its vast Cabinet depart-
ments defy easy control and coordination. As Governor, Reagan
could issue line-item vetoes, striking out specific programs from
the budget, but he has no such authority in the White House. He
must bargain and trade as the budget wriggles through Congress,
then accept or reject it, all in huge departmental chunks. At the
state level, too. Reagan had more legal power and flexibility in
dealing with the civil service than be will at the Federal level.
Politically, he now faces entrenched alliances of Federal bureau-
crats, Congressional commlitces, and special interests — what an-
other former Governor called “the iron triangle” — ready to blunt
his plans to cut programs, dismantle agencies, and turn over some
Federal functions to the states.

Whatever the obstacles, Reagan has decided to put the imprint
of his own corporate style of leadership on Washington. He is
transplanting one central element of his Sacramento experience —
his use of a small inner Cabinet as his principal policy-making
body. As a political chairman of the board, Reagan liked to meet
regularly with his five principal Cabinet officers and his chief of
staff, making the thirty-two other state department heads report to
him through this inner core. Those small Cabinet meetings were
his forum for debating poli^ options with his closest advisers. As
they argued, Reagan would often ply the participants with jelly
beans, his favorite candy, or arouse them with one-liners to ease
the tension if the arguments got too heavy. Sometimes he would
make decisions on the spot, sometimes later. And he delegated to
the Cabinet officers the responsibility to carry out his decisions,

Reagan and his aides took one look at the current style of
Federal Cabinet meetings — sometimes attended by twenty-five
people including department beads, the Budget Director, C.I.A.
Director, trade representative. United Nations Ambassador, eco-
nomic adviser, White House Chief of Staff, and other aides — and
decided they were too unwieldy, loo large for the kind of candid
give-and-take that Reagan wauled. So they adapted the Sacra-
mento model and came up wth an Executive Committee of the

167

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

Cabinet, seven or eight key figures like the Vice-President, the At-
torney General, the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Agri-
culture, and Health and Human Services — plus Ed Meese, Rea-
gan’s California chief of staff now acting as a Counselor to the
President and coordinator of Cabinet business and running the
staffs that write up policy options for the Cabinet.

To emphasize the collegial character of the Cabinet and the
primary function of its members to advise the President on policy
matters across-the-board rather than to act as advocates for the
departments they head, the Reagan blueprint called for Cabinet
Secretaries to take offices in the Executive Office Building next
door to the White House. “Geography is important in Washing-
ton,” explained one Reagan aide. “The location of their offices is
a symbolic move.”

Moreover, Meese contended, the Reagan scheme will hope-
fully reduce the “built-in” competition over policy-making be-
tween the Cabinet and a powerful White House staff, a rivalry
that has hampered previous administrations. The small inner
Cabinet, suggested William French Smith, Reagan’s close friend
and personal attorney, “provides a diversity of input but is not so
large that it’s unmanageable.” And once the Cabinet officers have
had their say, their chance to dissent, he added, they are tacitly
committed to loyalty on all presidential decisions.

No less experienced a figure than former President Nixon,
who once entertained the idea of a super-Cabinet himself, is
skeptical. It is unrealistic, Nixon has said, to expect collective
Cabinet responsibility on the British model. “Every new President
takes office promising a strong Cabinet of independent members
and some new Presidents take office reaUy believing this prom-
ise,” Nixon wrote in a Time magazine essay this faU. “But each
soon learns that there have to be limits on the individual Cabinet
members’ independence, and that the Cabinet as a collective body
is not suited to decision-making. . . . Each department is a sepa-
rate fiefdom; if there is to be coherence and direction to the ad-
ministration’s policies, the President has to impose that direction
from the top, cutting across the often conflicting interests of the

168

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

various depaitmenls. The President must, of course, consult his
Cabinet members, just as he consults the leaders of Congress. But
on the larger questions only he can decide; only he can lead.”

In the past, Ihc Reagan approach has put a heavy premium on
the calibre and experience of his principal advisers.. Some who
have worked with him, like John Sears, contend that Reagan's de-
pendence on his Cabinet and staft makes him, in essence, the cap-
tive of his inner circle. They see him as a leader who ratifies the
consensus of bis closest advisers on many decisions rather than
origicating his decisions in lonely isolation, as Nixon did, or by
forcing the clash of competing ideas from individual advisers, op-
erating on their own, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did.

“Reagan sits at any gathering of close advisers as an interested
participant rather than as the leader who orders the discussion,”
Sears commented. “He’s not a stupid man. He appreciates the nu-
ances of what is proposed to him. It’s just that he’s not the origina-
tor of ideas. He's a more malleable and moderate person than he’s
generally thought to be. He’s not a cooceptualizer. He’s a bor-
rower and an endorser. It’s fair to say that on some occasions he is
presented with options and selects one, hut it is also true that in
other instances be simply looks to someone to tell him what to
do,”

Sears’ theory is that Reagan learned to accept the advice of
handlers during his long years as an actor in Hollywood when
producers and directors gave him a script and told him what role
to play. Sears cites his own experience in persuading Reagan to
accept Schweiker as his 1976 running male or to go along with the
cautious, bicnderized, aloof style of campaigning at the start of
1980, though when that failed, Reagan angrily dismissed Sears at
the urging of conservatives. Later, a subsequent group of advisers
pushed Reagan first to keep, then to get rid of Republican Na-
tional Chairman Bill Brock, and finally to retain him when that
stirred up opposition among Republican regulars. It was his cam-
paign staff, too, that persuaded him, despite his initial reluctance,
to try first Ford and then Bush as his running mate. In each
Reagan was moved by the consensus of his staff or close frien

169

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

“It is the endorsing process that accounts for the difference be-
tween Reagan, the campaigner, and Reagan’s more moderate
record as Governor of California,” Sears wrote in The Washington
Post last summer. “The white-carded stump speeches are Reagan,
the performer, playing to a known audience and sending the
crowd away with its money’s worth. As Governor, there was no
crowd, merely decisions to be made, only a few of which were
very exciting. Reagan sat with his California Cabinet more as an
equal than as its leader. Once consensus was derived or conflict
resolved, he emerged as spokesman.”

Others who worked with Reagan during that period strongly
dispute Sears’ portrait. “If it’s a routine decision, it’s probably true
that Reagan goes along with a consensus,” comments William
French Smith, a California attorney who served with Reagan on
the University of California Board of Regents for several years.
“But believe me, he’s any thin g but a rubber stamp. The whole
Board of Regents could go one way and he’d go the other way if
he felt strongly. He’d overrule the whole group without batting an
eye. What’s more, he’ll make a decision promptly and decisively,
and never look back.”

Others say that Reagan has often received divided counsel but
this has not paralyzed him from making decisions. As Governor
he was urged by some Cabinet aides to order construction of Dos
Rios Dam in northern California as a flood and water control
measure in the Round Valley region. Cabinet opponents argued
against the project on grounds it would destroy a very picturesque
area and violate a treaty with Indians living there. In the end,
Reagan decided against the dam. “He didn’t want to go against
the Indian treaties,” recalls Ed Meese.

In the 1980 campaign, Reagan insisted, against the advice of
his political aides, on backing a constitutional amendment ban-
ning abortions. Later, some advisers urged him to back away from
his plan for a three-year, across-the-board 10 percent annual in-
come tax cut, but Reagan stuck with it. Finally, he received con-
flicting advice on whether he should debate Carter this fall and

170

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

came down quickly on U>e side of 0.e pro-deba.e majority on his

'“'^.ike Eisenhower, Reagan likes to get his tafomration for deri-
sions orally or in adver-

ten to the arguments, saysEdMeese. H , ,c. k,,, nossible
sary situation, in the contest of ideas, you get the best po s me
Zs and the widest scope and variety of f
reading, ifs only two-dimensional. But ' jjaving a

quesUon the participants. One idea sparks ■

Leting creates a focal point for decision-making. You 8=1
policy advisers and aBer they-ve had an mput, it builds team

CaUfomia, he Uked one-page cover
papers that came to him. His executive assistant, ’

devised a system of “mini memos*’ four paragraphs
fint paragraph stating the issue, the second setting ou ■

die third providing analysis, and the fourth a
recommendation. The memos were no more than ’ ®

words long. At the bottom, if he agreed, Reagan cou
“O.K. R,R,” On a criUcal policy question, Reagan would gel a
stream of mini memos, 100 or more, keeping him ®

changing situation. Sometimes they were accompanied by long
staff studies.

“This guy does his homework and comes back with qucslio^
that indicate he’s thought about what his staff gives him to ’
said Richard Whalen, a Reagan consultant and speechwnter. He
identifies his concerns as he reads. But he likes to get his in orma
lion facc-to-face. He likes to look at people and ask them ques-
tions.” v, I he

There is a contrary, though minority, view of
is sometimes not sufficiently demanding of those who bne
‘To a certain extent, he wants confirmation and
his own views,” said one former aide. “His operational inc ^
is not to say, ‘I want to know the other side. I want to ,t

subtleties.’ He’s read a lot over the years and he thinks he

171

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

This former aide suggested that the fault lay vi-ith subordinates
rclurtant to give Reagan bad news. “Most people around big poli-
ticians are intimidated by power and the people around Reagan
are no exception,” this man observ'ed. “Reagan will take contrary
adsice if you give it to him well. You have to be sharp and persua- -
sive. He’ll lose his temper. Or his eyes v.-ill glaze over if people
give him a lot of generalities. He gets bored with a lot of baloney.
You’ve got to push him. You’ve got to be firm. You have to tell
him, ‘You’ve been wrong. Governor,’ or ‘You ought to take this
more into account,’ or ‘Governor, you ought to put it this way.’ He
doesn’t like it, but he’U take it Fm not sure that some of the j>eo-
ple around him are always up to that”

Reagan has several circles of adsisers. The most forthright
and most trusted are his California Kitchen CabineL These are his
peers, the old political and social friends "RTth whom he relaxes
and to whom he turns in a crunch: Justin Dart, the industrialist:
Holmes Tuttle, owner of several Los Angeles automobile dealer-
ships; William French Smith, his personal attomej-; and others.
They coaxed him into politics, helped pick his Sacramento Cabi-
net in 1966, and did the same job again this time. They also
nudged him into picking Geoige Bush as \’ice-President, as a
smart political move that would sit well with the business com-
munity.

These are Reagan’s most reliable and most oft-used sounding
board and, in large measure, thej' tend to reinforce his own Aiew
of the world, especially his faith in free enterprise, his distaste for
big government, and his wary suspicion of world Communism. In
terms of personality, at one end is Dart, a bulky, gruff blunt-
spoken but likable self-made sunbelt enlerpreneur stfll Aigorous at
seventy-two; and at the other end is Smith, a trim, precise, com-
posed, thoughtful, even bookish and worldly attome}' with proper
Bostonian roots.

Reagan’s campaign advisers are about a generation v'ounger
th a n the Kitchen Cabinet. ~rb.sy are mostly men in their mid-for-
ties and early fifties with personal businesses that thej* left for the
campaign but did not want to give up for the White House. Most

172

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

are political technicians and tacticians rather than policy advisers.
Typical of that group is Michael K. Deaver, Reagan’s campaign
tour director. Deaver is a smooth, self-controlled profession^ and
Reagan loyalist with a private public relations firartn Los Angeles
and with close enough ties to Reagan, dating back to his staff as
Governor, to serve the new President as a personal aide.

By far the most important of this group and the one to whom
Reagan turns most instinctively is Edwin Meese, III, his former
California chief of staff. Meese is an attorney with a bent for man-
agement and an interest in police work, now on leave from his
post as Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and
Management at the University of San Diego law school. He is so
management-oriented and thinks so readily in terms of adminis-
trative structures that he frequently refers to the President’s 300
most important political appointees as the *’300 top managerial
jobs” in government.

Cordial, methodical, and unflappable, Meese, now forty-nine,
has sometimes been criticized by colleagues as indecisive, overly
neutral, and disinclined to give Reagan contrary advice, fiut he
has a good public presence, a friendly manner, a quick mind, and
organizational skill. Reagan is comfortable with Meese as his
most bandy collator and coordinator of options. His role as the
President’s counselor working with the Cabinet on issues makes
him, as he once said, "ihe pivot point” of the new administration.
In no other aide does Reagan repose greater confidence, and that
is why he has chosen to put Meese at his elbow.

A top Carter White House official came away from his first
encounter with Meese and other leaders of the Reagan transition
team impressed with their calibre, their knowledgeability, and
their calm self-assurance.

‘They’re good,” said this lifelong Democrat. ‘They’re experi-
enced. They know what they’re doing and they know what they
want. They’re better informed than we were four years ago.
They’re older than we were, less awed and excited about taking
over the government. A lot of them are Washington veterans. But
out of twenty-four people, there were only two women. No blacks

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

and no other minorities. They’re more relaxed about their work
than we were. I have a feeling this White House is going to have a
hell of a lot more fun than we did. They’re going to have wine for
lunch. There’s going to be an atmospheric change for the better
inside the government. Now, whether that will work to the good
of the country' remains to be seen.”

Among politicians, Reagan’s closest friend and confidant is
Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada. Had Reagan had an entirely free
hand, without having to worry about geographical balance or
ideological diversity, or name recognition among voters, he would
have picked Laxalt as his Vice-President. That would have de-
lighted his conservative partisans.

Politics dictated Bush, who in his tireless, upbeat eagerness
had proven Reagan’s most effective challenger. Bush’s experience
as U.N. Ambassador, chief American diplomat in Peking, and Di-
rector of Central Intelligence compensated for Reagan’s lack of
experience in foreign affairs. With the election over, Reagan has
talked of using Bush as more than a ceremonial stand-in and the
presiding officer of the Senate. Not to draw Bush into policy’ for-
mulation and into the Cabinet, Reagan said rather drily at his first
post-election press conference, w^ould be to “waste a valuable
asset.” Each has spoken of their growing friendship and their
regular contacts by phone during the campaign, and obviousi}’
they get on well enough. But Bush’s role has not been defined and
they are veiy different men. Bush with his Coimecticut Yankee
roots to the Eastern Establishment and Reagan with his roots in
the Midwest and his life shaped by HoUyw’ood. It will take time
for them to forge a full working partnership.

Reagan’s friendship with Laxalt, on the other hand, springs
from an instinctive personal camaraderie and conservative ideo-
logical kinship. They met in 1966 as governors of neighboring
states and immediately became friends. Laxalt, the son of a
Basque sheepherder who immigrated to this country, is an open,
gregarious, striking, silver-haired Westerner given to wearing
well-polished bools with his tailored suits. He led the opposition

174

MR, REAOANGOESTO WASffrNOTON

to the Paoania Canal Treaties, motivated by concern about na-
tional defense, but he avoided the emotionalism of other treaty
foes. In the Senate, he is known for his mild manner and sensi-
tivity to others’ feelings.

Twice, Laxalt has talked Reagan into making his runs for the
Presidency and has become cbainnan of the Reagan campaigns.
In the Senate, he is the uncrowned leader of the conservatives, a
man who could have made a bid tWs year for the Senate leader-
ship but understood at once that it would be divisive and chose
not to. Membership in the Reagan Cabinet could have easily been
his, though he fell he could help Reagan more in the Senate by
managing and channeling feisty conservatives. So close is Laxalt
to the new President that Howard Baker shrewdly observed, “Paul
is the one person whose position is so secure that he doesn’t need a
title in the new administration.”

As Reagan turned to the business of picking his Cabinet, he
was looking for a mix of leaders with Washington experience,
fresh political faces, and expert managers drawn from the world
of busmess. He wanted what Meese called “independent players
who will voice dissenting views” but within the framework of his
conservative philosophy. “Obviously,” said Meese, “he doesn’t
want to debate the basics in Cabinet meetings. What he likes are
people who will speak their minds — but team players, not dis-
senters who leak to the press various options that weren’t taken.”
Quite deliberately Reagan staffed his various advisory panels with
Cabinet candidates.

In the most controversial field, economic policy, Reagan has
borrowed heavily from the populist “supply side” economics of
Representative Jack Kemp of Buffalo and California economist
Arthur Laffer, but the lead in his economic advisory group has
been taken by more traditional conservatives like former Treasury
Secretary George Shultz; Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of
the Council of Economic Advisere; and William Simon, the for-
mer Treasury Secretary who is a favorite of Reagan’s Kitchen
Cabinet. When he sought advice on spending cuts, he chose Cas-

775

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

par Weinberger, a former Federal Budget Director with experi-
ence and qualifications to take on one of several Cabinet-level
jobs.

Reagan put his foreign policy' advisory board under William
J. Casey, a sixty-seven-year old New York tax lawyer who ran his
campaign, has a long backgroimd in intelligence, and served as
Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs. As time wore on,
Reagan leaned heavily on former Nixon and Ford administration
officials like former NATO Commander and White House Staff
Chief, A1 Haig, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former
Treasury Secretary and Texas Governor John B. Connally, former
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Senator John Tower of
Texas, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
He also made a point of drawing a Democrat, Senator Henry M.
Jackson of Washington, into his senior council

The Reagan team had a problem finding many blacks and
women for top spots. But among the blacks were Thomas SowelL,
a conservative economist from the University of California at Los
Angeles, and Walter E. Williams, another economist from Temple
University. One or the other has taken the kind of positions Rea-
gan advocates fay opposing the minimum wage, busing, and af-
firmative action programs. Among the women singled out by the
Reagan high command were Anne Armstrong, former U.S. Am-
bassador to Britain; Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and a
conser^'ative Democrat; and Elizabeth Dole, a former member of
the Federal Trade Commissiotr.

Reagan’s best known woman ad\iser, however, is his wife,
Nancy, who is such a constant companion that one friend jokingly
remarke4 “They are joined at the hip.” Their very closeness has
fueled speculation and controversy about her political influence
on Reagan. She has denied having influenced his conversion from
Democratic liberalism to Republican conservativism in the post-
war period, having affected his views on pnilicy matters, or having
engineered any of the various changes in his staff over the years.
“My husband makes his decisions,” she told a Nev.' York. Twibs in-

176

MR. REAOAN GOES TO WASHtNGTON

terviewer. “1 might suggest an idea to him, but my husband makes
his decisions."

Other politicians, especially those who have worked closely
around Reagan, believe that she reinforces bis opposition to the
Equal Rights Amendment and to abortion, but otherwise has lim-
ited influence on issues. Where they sense her weight is on his
choice of staff or his broader political strategy. Many believe she
was more eager for him to run for the Presidency in 1976 than
Reagan himself. ‘‘She’s very much involved in most of the major
decisions of the campaign, as a key adviser to the Governor,”
commented Charles Black, national political director for Reagan
before his staff purge in February 1980. “He’s his own man, but
she's probably the single most important influence on him. And
she’s very ambitious for him. as wcQ as totally dedicated.”

John Sears described her prindpal role as one of a sounding
board, not so much telling Reagan what to do or not to do but re-
sponding to his various alternatives. ‘‘It’s more helping him talk
something through because she knows him better than anyone
else,” Sears said. Others have described her as a keener, quicker
judge of people than Reagan, and thus an important influence on
his choice of top advisers or his running mate. They attribute to
her a major role in his decision, for example, to let go bis Press
Secretary, Lyn Nofriger, and even to fire Sears, Black, and Jim
Lake during the primary campaign after bis Iowa loss. And most
of his entourage regard it as very important for any top Reagan
adviser to be on the good side of Nancy. “She’s quicker and surer
in her judgments of people than Reagan is,” said one aide, “and
that’s something on which he listens to her and is affected by her
judgments. If she likes someone, it can help. If she doesn’t think
much of someone, it can hurt.”

“Has she influenced me?” Reagan himself responded when
asked the question. “Yes, because I’ve never been happier in my
life than I have been with her. She is very much what you see.
There is a geatleiKss to her, a flercc feeling of famUy loyalty. I
miss her very much when we’re not together. We’re very happy. I

177

REAGAN THE MAN, THE PRESIDENT

imagine if I sold shoes, as my father did, she would have wanted
to help me sell shoes. She’s a very intelligent person. I don’t know
of anything we don’t talk about.”

Ronald Wilson Reagan has promised the American people no
less than “an era of national renewal” and the election of 1980 has
provided him a more favorable setting for a bold experiment in
conservatism than either he or his partisans had dreamed of. The
Republicans, surprised by their own success, sense a unique op-
portunity that must not be squandered by shooting off on contro-
versial tangents. The Democrats, chastened by their losses, are
prepared to give the new President a chance provided he does not
go too far to undo the social programs of the past two decades.
And Reagan, himself, in his first moves, has been sensitive enough
to reach beyond his California circle for top-level talent and to
signal immediate interest in marshalling as broad a bipartisan
coalition as possible to carry forward his objectives.

On his first post-elertion visit to Washington, Reagan
charmed the political establishment, which was flattered by his at-
tention. “I like him,” said House Speaker Thomas P. O’NetU, Jr.
“He left an amiable feeling.” With a bit of symbolism widely ap-
preciated as a contrast with Jimmy Carter, who ran for President
as an outsider and remained an outsider to much of the city, Rea-
gan quickly offered the hand of friendship to the city’s civic lead-
ers and local Democrats by hosting prominent business, cultural
and political figures at a dinner in the exclusive, Victorian F.
Street Club.

“Now you’re in the big leagues,” O’Neill told Reagan joking-
ly. “He was a Uttle surprised when I said that,” the speaker ob-
served afterward. “That won’t be the first time he’ll be surprised.”

Reagan has awakened extravagant expectations and if he is to
succeed he will need not only a well united party behind him but
time — time to try to curb inflation, rekindle the productive thrust
of the economy, restore the nation’s sense of military security, re-
lieve its fearful and mflationary dependence on foreign oil, and
revamp the role of the Federal Government in American life. The

178

MR. REAGAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

problems that confront him will take years to solve and the solu-
tions he proposes will lake years to work, more time perhaps than
an impatient and undisciplined public will allow, more time than
a turbulent world may permit.

The time impcralivc presses Reagan to produce an immediate
sense of forward motion, to produce the feeling that he is taking
charge of the situation, that something is being done to cope with
the drill and uncertainty that caused such an explosive burst of
frustration from the voters against Jimmy Carter and the Demo-
crats on November 4.

With the sense of that urgency, the new administration is fol-
lowing a timetable that calls for a freeze on Federal luring and a
dramatic package of cuts in the 1981 budget within ten days of
inauguration, quickly followed by messages to Congress promot-
ing Reagan’s 10 percent income tax cut and accelerated business
depreciation schedules to stimulate the private sector, and another
message asking renewal of presidential authority to reorganize ex-
ecutive departments, laying the groundwork to carry out Reagan’s
campaign pledge to abolish the Department of Education and
possibly the Department of Energy as well. By executive order,
Reagan and his Cabinet will quickly begin snipping away at the
web of regulations that strangles economic growth, as Reagan sees
it. Decontrol of oil pricing may be speeded up.

Symbolically, Reagan’s advisers believe, the most important
action is the drive to hold down Federal spending to cutbacks in
Federal travel, outside consulting contracts, and the purchase of
equipment, as well as stretching out expenditures for highways,
airports, mass transit, and sewage plants, not to mention potential
savings through trimming eligibility rules and ovcrlappmg pay-
ments in the food stamp program, school lunch program, bousing
assistance and Medicaid. “Wc’U never bring down long-term in-
terest rates unless we show the financial markets we mean busi-
ness,” said Representative Jack Kemp, an ardent advocate of in-
centive economics.

Reagan’s dilemma is that if the cutbacks are too sharp, he will
arouse the powerful combined opposition of many interest groups

179

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

and then embroil his proposals in legislative dogfights and delays,
but if they are not sharp enough, that will undermine his basic
economic strategy. “If Reagan can improve the efficiency of the
Federal government without hurting benefits, there isn’t a Demo-
crat who doesn’t want to do that,” said Representative Thomas
Foley of Washington, in a characteristic mainstream Democratic
reaction. “But if the administration moves in radical ways to undo
•programs enacted over the last-two generations, there will be op-
position.”

Even before taking office, the Reagan strategists recognize
that tampering with the Social Security program would be politi-
cal suicide. Moreover, Ed Meese among others recalled that
Jimmy Carter, in his ambitions for an energetic Presidency, had
contributed to his own undoing by overloading Congress in his
first months in office. “It’s a big mistake to try to do too much im-
mediately after taking office,” Meese observed. “We want to pace
ourselves and keep a firm sense of priorities.” But the high pri-
ority attached by Reagan to a big rise in defense spending, if ac-
companied by drastic domestic cuts, may touch off a troubling
groundswellin Congress that will nag him for months to come.

Reagan himself, seeking greater public patience, remarked
that “those things we can do administratively, we’U start doing im-
mediately, but I don’t think we’ve ever promised the effect wiU be
imm ediate.”

One difficulty is that Reagan is bound to be caught in a cross
fire between hesitant Democrats like Foley and ardent Reaganites
of the New Right who want strong action and are irked by any
hint that Reagan is letting what he once called “pale pastels”
creep into “the bold banner” of conservatism that he held aloft for
years. “I don’t see the hardcore Reaganites around Reagan,” said
John Lofton, editor of Conservative Digest. “Sometimes I wonder
how much of a Reaganite Reagan is, and unfortunately those
times are becoming more frequent.”

In his battle for time, the new President has one great asset
over Jimmy Carter; his capacity to use what Teddy Roosevelt

180

MK.REAOAN GOESTO WASHINGTON

called "the bully pulpit" to communicate his vision to the people
and to replenish his political power by rallying popular suppon.

Some have called Reagan the most eflectivc media politician
of the McLuhan era. So far, his political mastery has not been of
the people in the political structure, but of the camera, the scene,
the techniques of mass communication. As Hollywood discovered,
he is a natural'bom star. In an era of media^dominated politics, in
which all office seekers and officeholdeTS are actors to some de-
gree, Reagan has the advantage of the professional. As Jimmy
Carter discovered in whai for him was their devastating debate in
Cleveland, Reagan is at home on stage and has been for years.

But this is not an unalloyed asset for Reagan^ he cannot-afTord
to misuse it. As the verbal galTes ofhis fall campaign indicated, he
may trip up and in the White House, stumbles can be very, very
costly. For the Presidency invites demanding scrutiny to every
word and Reagan can no longer afford to do freely, without disci*
pline, what he has done best all these years — play to sympathetic
conservative audiences, occasionally giving them what some ofhis
campaign aides have graphically termed "a piece of red meat" in
the form of hot political rhetoric. Careless words can upset diplo-
macy abroad or undercut credibility at home, especially for a
leader who banks heavily on his speeches to generate the momen-
tum behind his programs.

"In the first year or so, Reagan will probably get along all
right with the kind of general approach he used in the campaign,”
commented a Carter White House ofticial. "But what is he going
to do after his first year, when the people see the problems arc
now his and not Carter’s anymore? How is he going to use one-
liners at that point to explain the complexities of the situation?”

The sense of momentum is with the Republicans now as they
take office, but Reagan's own aides arc mindful that it will take
special effort to control the potential divisions in the Republican
ranks on Capitol Hill in the months ahead. And further afield,
events beyond Reagan’s control may inspire to distract him from
his central purpose. jThe rioting among blacks in Miami, Florida,

REAGAN THE MAN. THE PRESIDENT

last spring was an indicator that frustration among minorities,
especially if they feel neglected by local and national leadership,
can erupt at any time. Food prices can suddenly shoot up because
of shortages or OPEC may hike oil prices and play havoc with
Reagan’s anti-inflation program. For philosophic reasons, Reagan
has refused to use direct measures to stem the steady upward
march of domestic wages and prices.

Like other Presidents, Reagan is following his first impulse to
turn inward, to nurse domestic ills first and let the world wnit.
When he w'as asked by Time magazine right after his election
about the prospects for arms negotiations with the Soviets, his re-
sponse was: “The first job is to let them see the course we were
going to follow domestically, getting hold of our economy,
straightening out our energy problems. And the faa that we have
the will and determination to add to our defensive stature.”

The Kremlin may or may not choose to wait and be satisfied
with slow-moving preparations for arms talk and a rather cool
relationship with Washington. And in w’aiting, the Soviets may
become more responsive to the Reagan approach or else more ag-
gressive in the third world, more inclined to prey upon divisions
in the Atlantic Alliance, and less inhibited about inteiwening in
Poland if that situation gets out of hand again. But even if Mos-
cow is patient, Reagan will be a fortunate President indeed if he is
not embroiled in some confrontation with Iran, some provocative
widening of the Iran-Iraq w'ar, some aw’kward Arab-Israeli flare-
up, some w'orrisome upheaval in the Caribbean, or an economic
test of strength with OPEC over new oil price increases. As Jimmy
Carter found out, the world will not cooperate with a President’s
calendar.

In short, it will take good fortune, consummate political skill,
a clear set of priorities focused primarily on the economy, and an
ability to hold together the political coalition in Congress and the
popular support among the electorate, if Reagan is to make good
on the promise of his stunning electoral victory. Above all else, his
formula for managing the economy must produce tangible results
within a couple of years.

182

MR REAOANGOESTOWASffrSOTON

“I ihink wc have the opportunity to do what Konrad Ade-
nauer did in Germany, to ^comc the party of peace and pros-
perity that remains in power for two generations,” said Jack
Kemp, one of Reagan’s most enthusiastic backers. “But up to now
it’s been just campaign rhetoric. We’ll be a majority party when
we implement the policies that will bring about the prosperity and
full employment without inflation wc have promised. If we fail,
this will not turn out to be a significant election.”

/SJ

Chronology

February 6. 19)1
1920

i9J2

J9.U

1937

1941

1942

1942-1945

1945

Born in Tampico. Illinov. 5on of Jack and Nelle Reagan
Reagan family moves lo Dixon. Illinois, 90 miles west of
Chicago, nhere be will attend North High School
Oraduares from Eureka College with a major in economics
Hired as a SlO-a-game. play-by-play announcer at tadio
station woe in Davenport. Iowa
Takes a job as i75-a-i»eek sponsrasles at WHO in
' Dei hfotnes. loua

Signed by Warner Brothers, he makes hisTitm debut playing
a radio announcer tn Eove Is on she Air
Marries Jane Wyman

Portrays Ceorge Cipp in Knutf fiorknr. A/t-American
Daughter Maureen is bom

Appears tn King's Row. the highlight of his film career
Serves m the U.S Amy Air Corps, attaining the rank of
captain

Adopts a son. Michael

185

1947

1948

1950

1952

1954-1962

1958

1962

1964

1965

1966
1968

1970

1976

1980

Elected to the first of six terms as president of the Screen
Actors Guild

Testifies as a friendly witness in the House Un-American
Activities Committee probe of the movie industry

Marriage to Jane Wyman ends in divorce

Campaigns for Helen Gahagan Douglas in her unsuccessful
Senate race against Richard Nixon

Marries Nancy Davis on March 4
Daughter Patricia is born

Host of General Electric Theater on television and
spokesman for General Electric's personnel-relations
program

Son Ronald is born

Switches political affiliation to the Republican Part>

Final film appearance, in The Killers

Gains national attention in October through his televised
“A Time to Choose" address on behalf of Republican
presidential candidate Bariy Goldwater
Autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me? (with Richard G.
Hubler), published

Elected governor of California

Makes a last-minute run for the Republican presidential
nomination and is defeated by Richard Nixon.

Rccleacd to second term as governor of California
Narrowly defeated for Republican presidential nomination
by incumbent President Gerald R. Ford
Wins the Republican nomination for the Presidency, with
George Bush as his running mate

November 4, 1980 Elected 40th President of the United States

186

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